


Upon the Wild Waves

by afrikate



Series: The Curse of Natalis [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Disabled Character, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 13:16:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9273437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrikate/pseuds/afrikate
Summary: In 1943, during a firefight turned ugly in the North African desert, Bucky Barnes is bitten by a werewolf. After capturing Barnes, Dr. Arnim Zola becomes intrigued with the possibilities werewolves present to Hydra. Unfortunately, one member of Hydra fails to read the instruction manual.After recovering from the horrors of captivity, Bucky is ready to start fighting back. But how do you fight back against an evil cabal operating in secret? Well, first you're going to need a team...Set in the MCU and the Mercy Thompson novels by Patricia Briggs. Readers do not need to be familiar with the books in order to enjoy this story.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks go to my wonderful, amazing, fantastic beta [k8/paintedmaypole](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedmaypole/pseuds/k8). She pushed me to be a better writer, told me when I was overthinking things, and made me laugh really, really hard. Thanks so much, k8!
> 
> This is part 3 of a five-part series. Parts 1 and 2 are already up, and I'm working on parts 4 and 5.

New York City, May 2, 2012 

In the dim blue of the holographic light, Tony wants to be pissed about Agent Coulson interrupting date night. He glances over to the elevator where Pepper and Coulson disappeared. Well, he _is_ pissed about Coulson handing him homework on _date night_ \-- being a superhero and a responsible adult is a pain in the ass.

He scrutinizes files Coulson handed him, the virtual display spread out in front of him. Files  rotate around him in 3D holographic projection, the photos and .gifs a kaleidoscope of colors and sound. The roar coming from one video file is distracting. He mutes the giant green monster-thing and looks a another file where  a blonde giant in a red cape taking out a robot-- seriously, a _cape_ ? Come _on_. There are more things to look at, but the most worrisome is the file of a dude with long, greasy black hair attacking SHIELD agents with a glowing spear.

Tony does a quick run through of all of them, scanning for prioritization and cross referencing with the, erm, ‘liberated’ SHIELD files on his servers. He leans back on the couch. “Well, Jarvis, what do you think?”

Jarvis’ voice is quiet, matching the dim light in the room. “It seems, sir, like SHIELD has provided the bare minimum you will need to accomplish the task they have given you.”

Tony glances up to one of the cameras embedded in the walls and smiles. “Got it in one, Jarvis.” He turns back to the display, muttering, “Spies never want to share with me. Good thing I’m not stuck waiting for them to give me all their secrets.”

He pinches his fingers and thumb together to collapse everything else and then expands greasy-hair-spear-dude’s file. He studies the documents in it-- there’s a paper by Eric Selvig that looks fascinating. Then he drags the file on Captain America out of the background, so the two files are side-by-side. He looks at both of  them for a minute, torn, before flicking his fingers out to explode Captain America’s file and quickly flipping through the data.

“Looks like SHIELD found the crash site for the greatest American hero.” Tony continues flicking through the historical files on Rogers, then stops on a video file dated April 2012. “Jarvis,” he murmurs, “are you seeing this?”

“Indeed, sir,” Jarvis says, voice carrying the faintest hint of shock. “I was given to understand that humans cannot rise from the dead.”

Tony’s staring at the recording, Steve Rogers in an ice bath, heart rate monitor spiking at the bottom of the screen. It’s timestamped April 6, 2012, 18:00. “Jarvis, can you verify this date for me?”

“I will try, sir.”

Tony flips through the rest of the file quickly-- at least half of it is historical records, but there are more recent recordings too. One, dated three days ago, shows Rogers standing awkwardly next to Nick Fury.

“Shit.” Tony stands up, paces across the room to the bar, and grabs a bottle of water. “Shit!”

Not only do they have an alien invader (which, isn’t that _enough_ ?), SHIELD found Captain America, locked in ice, and then they decided to defrost him and keep the whole thing a secret. In case anyone needed it verified, SHIELD  continues to be shady as _shit_.

This leaves Tony with two questions. If this weren’t a potentially world-ending event, would  SHIELD even _consider_ letting him know about Captain America? And, two, just how quickly are they going to try to lock Cap up again once the threat is contained? _Fuck_.

“Jarvis,” Tony says quietly, leaning against the bar top and tapping the water bottle against his leg. “Who else is in the building right now?”

There’s a short hum, and then Jarvis responds. “I assume, sir, you mean beyond the usual night staff?”

“We-ell,” Tony says, considering, “We’ve still got a skeleton crew, right?” He thinks for a minute. “Security managers are Gutierrez, Nshala, Diawara, and Franklin tonight, right?”

“Yes, sir,” says Jarvis. “Before he left with Ms. Potts, Agent Coulson appears to have tasked two of his colleagues to remain downstairs in the lobby and one up on the flight deck.” After a short pause, Jarvis continues, “My cameras are also picking up SHIELD vehicles at both the 41st and 42nd Street entrances.”

“Huh.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tony runs his hand over his face, scratching at his goatee. He digs his toes deeper into the carpet. “Use the strongest encryption we’ve got and call Sarge.”

When the call connects, Tony gets Bucky’s voicemail, which is a hell of an anticlimax. Fuck. “Call me back when you get this,” Tony says, “Any time.”

“Shit.” He stalks around the room for a minute, snapping his fingers before he stops back the middle of the room, where the files on Captain America are hovering, waiting for him. “He is going to _freak out_.”

Tony takes one last look at the image of Rogers standing next to Fury. In the frame, Rogers is hunched in on himself. He looks like he’s trying to disappear. Then Tony flicks the file away and pulls forward Selvig’s paper. He scans the abstract, then sits back on the couch, getting comfortable.

“Jarvis, kick up the tunes.”

 

* * *

 

South Hadley, MA, and Boston, MA, May 12, 1991 

There are little knots of people all over the quad, each one surrounding a graduate in black. Bucky hangs back a bit while Alan, Ayumi, and Layla fuss over Minako. Ayumi is adjusting the fall of her gown while Layla tries to straighten her cap. Min catches his eye over her mother’s shoulder, rolling her eyes at him, and Bucky smiles at her, so proud.

Bucky’s got the camera and he brings it up for a group shot. “Say cheese,” he tells them, and it makes them all smile.

As they head over toward the hall for graduation, he catches a half-familiar scent, and stops a minute, tense, scanning for the quad. Alan catches him at it, asks under his breath, “Trouble?”

Bucky’s wolf is awake now too, intent, but the scent dissipates.

“I thought I smelled something,” Bucky murmurs, “It’s gone now.”

Alan watches him carefully, and Bucky knows that look, feels half-fond, half-annoyed. “All right,” Alan says, “tell me if it comes back.”

Bucky nods and then they turn, catching up with the girls.

***

After the ceremony, they head over to Min’s dorm-- she wants to change shoes before they go out for a late lunch. Bucky catches the scent again, this time, coming from the dormitory building. He’s wary, though the wolf is less concerned. Still, he catches Alan’s arm.

“I’ve got that scent again,” Bucky tells him. “It’s coming from over by the dorm.”

Alan nods. “All right, I’ll keep them here, you check it out.” When Bucky starts to head over Alan stops him with a hand on his right arm, says, “Be careful, be _discreet_.”

The anger flares up and it takes Bucky a second to breathe through it, let it go. He shakes Alan’s hand off, and Alan stands close, watching him carefully.

Roughly, Bucky says, “I’m not your wolf to call anymore, Alan.” Then, calmer, “I’ll be right back.”

His wolf is wide awake now, looking out with careful eyes. Bucky resists the urge to mutter under his breath-- Alan will hear him, and he doesn’t actively want to start a fight on Min’s big day-- and heads toward the dorm. There are lots of people, and he pastes a smile on his face, walking slowly, trying to match person to scent, and then—

“Sarge?”

It’s a black man, once tall, now a little stooped, but still standing straight. He’s in a suit, like most of the others, hair white, and he’s wearing glasses. Bucky sees double for a minute, the old man and a younger counterpart in military gear, vision superimposed.

Bucky shakes his head to clear it, weaving a little on his feet. He’s out of it enough that he doesn’t track the man coming closer, nearly jumps when he feels a grip on his right forearm. The man says, “Sorry, I’m sorry, son.” Shakes his head like he’s laughing at himself. “You look like the spitting image of my sergeant back in the war.” And then he _winks_.

Bucky’s caught flat, doesn’t know what to do with any of it-- the voice, the scent, the God damned wink. It takes him a minute before he manages to scrape out, voice rough, “I think you’ve got to be mistaken. I wasn’t in the military.”

A young girl darts up on his left, startling him badly, and he nearly stumbles as he turns away from the man. The girl’s got dark skin and long curly hair and she’s wearing one of the black robes, like Min. He takes a deep breath, tries to get his heart rate under control, tries to remember there is little threat here.

“Grandpa,” the girl says. “We’ve got to get going.”

The man says, “All right, honey, I’m coming. Just a minute.” He turns back to Bucky, right hand reaches into jacket pocket and Bucky tracks it, even though he can already tell the man doesn’t have a gun. He pulls out a small white business card instead, black lettering, hands it over before Bucky can read it. “Here you go, son,” he says, and then offers his arm to his impatient granddaughter and walks away.

Without a thought, Bucky’s already pocketed the card, turned to walk back to his waiting family.

When they meet up again, Alan looks at him closely, probably seeing far more than Bucky wants, but only asks, “All clear?”

Bucky nods. “All clear.” He turns to Min, and mimics the old man, offering his left arm to her and saying, “This way, milady.”

She smiles up at him as she grips his bicep, where his sleeve is neatly pinned up, and says, “Lead on, good sir.”

***

Throughout the meal and the trip back to Boston, the card burns a hole in his pocket. He’d travelled down to Mount Holyoke with the Higuchis, a way to spend more time with Ayumi and Layla, but now all he wants to do is look at the card. It’s an effort for him to set that aside, make conversation on the drive and talk about Layla’s new job at a publishing house in New York. Alan grumbles the whole time about Layla needing to be careful, that the city is _dangerous_ , while Ayumi makes sly comments about how the hazards of Manhattan might stack up against being a werewolf.

Eventually, though, they drop Bucky off in front of his neat little house in Medford, and he leans in the passenger window to kiss Ayumi on the cheek.

“We’ll see you tomorrow?” she confirms.

Bucky smiles, says, “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Come over around five, I’ll have the grill going.”

Alan nods, says, “We’ll see you then,” and then he’s reversing out the driveway and heading down the street.

It’s a relief to get inside, loosen his tie, and shed his jacket. Bucky drops it over a dining room chair, heading into the kitchen for a beer.

He brings the bottle back into the living room, sits on the couch, and pulls out the card. It says

 

 

There’s a phone number and address below.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, staring down at the card. “Fuck.”

The thing about memories, Bucky has found, is that they can hit at any time, and while sometimes it’s a solitary thing, more often it’s a flood, memory over memory, one triggering the next and, if he’s not sitting down, it can knock him on his ass.

These come in a rush. Gabe carrying a pack, marching with Morita. Gabe mouthing off about the food and talking with Dernier in French, gesturing wildly. Steve’s there too, and the other Commandos, and God, he wants to hold onto them, but it’s too much, he can’t sort it all out. It will be days before he can put these memories in any kind of order and it probably won’t be the right one. When he surfaces, his beer’s warm on the table and he’s holding his head in his right hand, the remains of his left arm up as if to ward off a blow.

Bucky lowers the left slowly, rotating his shoulder. It feels like he pulled that one muscle again. He scrubs his right hand through his hair. “Motherfucker,” he says, viciously. “What the fuck am I going to do now?”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, May 22, 1991 

The card lives on the kitchen counter, next to the phone. He glances at it every time he walks by, though he doesn’t pick it up again. It takes Bucky a week to finally call, though his fingers itch whenever he picks up the handset.

It’s a Wednesday and he gets off early. He takes the phone from the kitchen, plugs it into the extension in his bedroom, and shuts the door. It’s not soundproof here, but it’s in the back of the house, defensible. The wolf approves.

The phone rings twice before someone answers. Then it’s the same voice, it’s _Gabe’s_ voice, and it takes him a minute to find his own.

“Hi Gabe.”

“One minute,” Gabe says, and Bucky hears the noises that means he’s stood up, a creak of hinges, the door closing. The receiver is picked up again and Gabe says, “That you, Sarge?”

Bucky’s got tears pricking his eyes and his voice is thick. “Yeah, Gabe, it’s me.”

“You’ll forgive me if I test you?”

Bucky feels the smile pull at his lips. “I’d be pissed if you didn’t, Private.”

He can hear the warmth in Gabe’s voice when he says, “What was the name of the pub we used to go to in London, those few times the brass gave us a leave.”

Bucky’s grateful, now, for the flood of memories the week before. It means he can say with confidence, “The Whip and Fiddle. Decent beer, cheap whiskey.”

Gabe’s voice is thick, a little rough, when he says, “The only kind you’d pay for.” He takes a breath, sighs. “I thought I was going nuts when I saw you, Sarge. I, uh. I have a lot of questions.”

Bucky echoes his sigh. “I bet you do.”

“This isn’t the time, though, is it?”

Bucky remembers now that Gabe always was perceptive. “It would be better if we could meet.”

He hears Gabe nod. “All right. I’m living in DC these days, but it’s probably for the best you don’t come down here. This number’s a Boston area code, right? I can probably come up, fly into Logan.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I can pick you up there. You wanna-- When can you come?”

They make plans for the following Thursday, and Bucky is jittery for the next week. 

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, May 30, 1991 

When Gabe arrives, it's just as strange as it was to see him near Min’s dorm or to talk to him on the phone. He climbs in Bucky’s truck at arrivals, settling back into the seat. At a light on the way out of the airport, Bucky looks over at him and for a moment, again, he has double vision-- a younger, thinner man looking back at him.  

“Weird, isn't it, Sarge?” Gabe says, looking over at him.

“Weird as hell, Gabe.”

***

Bucky takes him straight back to his place through the light mid-morning traffic; nothing they have to say to each other should be said in public. Gabe seems content to ride quietly, smells a little anxious, but mostly calm. At Bucky’s house, he goes where directed, settles easily into one of the chairs in the living room while Bucky fixes coffee. But as soon as Bucky sits down, he’s asking questions.

“How long you been in Boston, Sarge?” Gabe asks, setting down the cup of coffee Bucky hands him.

“Moved here in ‘86,” Bucky answers. “Before that, I was on the West Coast, in Portland, got there sometime in the early 70s.”

Gabe looks at him sharply, clearly surprised. “You don't know?”

Bucky grimaces as he shifts on the couch. “My memory isn't so great.” He sighs. “I could check with someone, but…”

Gabe shakes his head, “It's fine, Sarge.”

Bucky’s smile is a little lopsided. “Don't gotta call me that any more, Gabe. Not in the army now.”

Gabe shrugs, looks a little sheepish, “I can't really think of you any way else,” he says, and takes a sip of his coffee.

Bucky watches him a minute, the double-vision coming and going, before he asks, “So, you gonna tell me what gave you all that grey hair?”

Gabe laughs, caught off guard. “You always were kind of an asshole, Sarge.” He winks, “Not all of us can have your youthful good looks.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. No way to know if he ever told Gabe about what he is-- if he had, it’s not a memory he’s kept. He sidesteps that comment; instead, he looks down and away for a minute, remembering air brushing past. He looks up and makes himself say, without flinching, “The train was a trap, Gabe."

Gabe looks steadily back at him from the chair. “I know. We found Zola in the control room, ordering them to fire.”

“Yeah.” Bucky sighs, runs his fingers through his hair. “What I mean is, it was a trap for Steve _or_ for me.”

Gabe looks confused for a minute, leans forward, hands shifting on the arms of the chair. He says slowly, “You think Zola knew? About,” he waves his hand up and down, as if to encompass all of Bucky, “you?”

Bucky wonders again just how much he’d told the rest of the Commandos, but he nods.

“Azzano?” Gabe asks, leaning back in the chair and then answers himself, “Must’ve been, he had you for, what, couple of weeks?”

“I don’t remember.” Bucky says, though he remembers a table and that terrible accented voice and forcing himself not to shift. The wolf curls up in the back of his mind. “Don’t remember much from the war.” He pauses. “After Azzano, I’ve mostly got a blank spot of about twenty-five years.”

“After _Azzano_ ?” Gabe stares at him and Bucky nods. “You don’t remember-- _twenty-five years_?” Gabe’s hands are clenching on the chair and he leans forward again.

Bucky nods.

“The Captain wanted to look for you, but we thought--” Gabe closes his eyes. “No one could have survived that drop. Sheer fucking cliffs.” He opens his eyes again, and they are anguished. “But you-- Shit fuck _shit_ . God _damn it_.”

Bucky smiles sadly. “Yep, that’s about the size of it.”

***

It takes Gabe a while to get the swearing out of his system, long enough that Bucky heads back into the kitchen to put some cookies on a plate and refill their coffee. Gabe’s winding down when Bucky comes back. He says, “Okay, tell me what happened next.”

Bucky takes a seat on the couch and considers. Whatever he says, it’s going to hurt, but telling the truth has become a habit. In the end Bucky just says it.

“Some Russians found me. Took me back to their camp. Turns out…” He sighs, “turns out, Schmidt or Zola or someone went recruiting, because they were Hydra.”

Gabe’s gone pale. “Hydra?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re… serious? You’re serious. Hydra? Fucking…"

“Yeah, fucking Hydra,” Bucky says. The wolf is angry, starting to rise, but Bucky’s just tired. “They took my arm, made me--”

He stops, not sure if he’s ready to tell Gabe that, but he doesn’t have the choice.

“Made you what, Sarge?”

Gabe’s voice is full of compassion and Bucky has to look away. “Hydra had me for a good couple of decades. You think they wouldn’t figure out what I could do?” Bucky’s voice is rising and it makes him wince. He stands up again, paces a small circle around the room. “So yeah, Hydra continued in secret. Same goals, different strategy. Secret group needs a secret weapon, right?” He closes his eyes. “So they made me into one.”

***

They’re quiet for a while after that. Everything is too heavy, too painful. Eventually, Bucky gets up and starts making sandwiches for lunch. Gabe joins him at the dining room table to eat and Bucky asks what Gabe’s been up to, about his granddaughter’s graduation. Gabe talks about his family. He’s so damn proud of his daughters, his grandkids. It soothes something inside Bucky to hear him talk, to think of his happiness. The wolf is content in a way that reminds him of being around Min or Layla.

After lunch, sitting at the table, Gabe asks, “So what did you think about that trial?”

There's only one trial anyone talks about these days.

“Well, it was a pretty big shock, wasn’t it?” Bucky says. “Number one suspect can’t even hold the murder weapon.” Bucky shakes his head. “Fucking trial of the century-- everyone finds out the old stories are true and the Fae walk among us.” He very carefully doesn’t say that he’s known this for years. That the Fae and the werewolves are well aware of one another. Or that the wolves are watching avidly, to see how it all works out.

Gabe laughs, “Not as much of a shock to some people as you might think, Sarge.”

Bucky looks over at him, raises a brow. He _really_ wishes he remembered what he told the Commandos.

“So,” Gabe pushes back his plate, he’s got a look in his eyes that Bucky can’t quite read. “You going to tell me or are you going to make me guess the rest?”

“Wait,” Bucky frowns. “What do you…” He shakes his head. “I’m _not_ Fae.”

“Oh no,” Gabe smiles. “You? I know you’re not Fae. I might’ve thought it was strange, how you always seemed to hear the enemy before the rest of us, but,” Gabe shrugs. “It was war-- I know I was on edge all the time-- hearing things, seeing things...”

Gabe reaches for a cookie. “But,” Gabe’s voice gets thoughtful, “Dernier, he firmly believed you were a _loup garou_ \-- a werewolf.” He looks over at Bucky, grinning. “Frenchie would go _on_ about it when you and the Captain were out of earshot. Back then, I never more than half-believed it, but seeing you at that graduation? Well.” Gabe leans back in the chair. “Then it all came rushing back.”

Bucky looks at him carefully. “And now?”

“Well, Sarge,” Gabe says, tilting his head. “Putting it all together--” he  picks up his glass. “You tell me.”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Ah,” Gabe says, takes a sip. “Well, in that case, Sarge, we can keep plausible deniability on the table.”  He winks, then sighs. “Honestly, I’ve known about the Fae for a while. Couldn’t tell anyone, though, not even my wife. So when that trial came…” he shakes his head. “Never would have predicted that.” He smiles bitterly. “Should’ve predicted the reservations, though-- government keeps doing the same damn thing.”

Bucky frowns. “You knew about the Fae?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky can smell anger again, the banked sulfur-scent of true rage. “Gabe?”

Gabe looks down, poking at a groove on the surface of the table, “I’m sorry I didn’t kill Zola, Sarge. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Bucky starts. “You did your job, Private, and brought a prisoner in.”

“No,” Gabe shakes his head, still looking down at the table top. “Not then, Sarge.”

“What?” Bucky freezes, staring at Gabe’s bent head.

“After the war, after I finished school, I started teaching at Howard,” Gabe says quietly. “And after a while, Agent Carter, well, she was Director Carter by then, she approached me and asked me to do some translation work.”

Bucky has a vague impression of a dark-haired woman with red, red lips and an unimpressed look on her face. Bucky remembers staying out of her way. “Director Carter?”

“Yeah, they ended up turning the SSR into a new agency, the Strategic Homeland Blah Blah bullshit.” Gabe rolls his eyes. ”Nicknamed it SHIELD.”

Gabe takes a sip of his soda. “Anyway, I took the job and started doing translations. Mostly German, some Russian, sometimes French. Always highly technical, scientific stuff.”

Bucky nods.

“I did the translations for a couple years, and slowly, when I started putting it all together, it looked like human subjects research. I mean, each piece seemed innocuous, but the whole thing together… it stunk.” Gabe takes a breath. “So I took it to Director Carter. And it turned out that the shit I’d been translating? It belonged to Zola. Zola!”

Gabe looks furious now, voice shaking. “When she told me, I nearly fainted. I did some yelling, let me tell you. I was _irate_.”

“Carter hired Zola?” Bucky can feel his anger rising, the wolf shining from his eyes. He stands up, backs away from the table, and starts pacing.

“Sarge?”

“Go on, Private,” he snaps.

“All right,” Gabe murmurs, sinking back in his chair. “Some idiot recruited him under the Operation Paperclip. Decided they didn’t want his brain falling into Russian hands, that he was too strategically important to let go.” Gabe shakes his head. “Idiots. SHIELD got first pick of that round of Nazis. Everyone figured Director Carter would pass up the chance. But she figured, if Zola was coming to the US, she wanted to know every move he made.”

“And did she?” Bucky growls.

He can feel Gabe’s eyes on him while he paces. “She told me she had him watched as much as she could. She made sure he handed in his work every day; had it translated by a couple people, including me.”

Bucky makes himself stop moving. He leans against the dining room wall facing Gabe.

“When I told her about the human subjects stuff, she went after him as much as she could.” Gabe’s smiling, and he smells of satisfaction. “She destroyed his lab in a fire, made sure he couldn’t start those projects up again.” Then Gabe sighs, “Well, but it turned out it wasn’t quite _human_ subjects. It was Fae.”

Bucky stares at him. “You’re saying Zola wanted to do experiments on the Fae.”

“Yeah,” Gabe nods. “Carter didn’t want to believe him, so she had other people checking the research. Confirming he wasn’t lying about the Fae.”

“And when she had confirmation?” Bucky asks, gripping his left arm with his right. “She shut him down?”

“Like I said, destroyed his lab, took away his research-- she told me, she even cut his funding,” says Gabe, hands opens in front of him. “Zola’s a snake-- but I’m not sure what he could do without the financing.”

“You’d be surprised.” Bucky says blandly. He thinks about what he’s managed to ferret out about Hydra without much money-- you move slower, without resources, but you can still move. Someone like Zola? He’d lost everything in the war-- he’d have a contingency plan for everything after that.

“I guess it’ll do them some good now,” Gabe shrugs. “Now, SHIELD is probably one of the only agencies that has research on the Fae. Decades of research.” Gabe looks up at Bucky. “You know that Bureau of Fae Affairs they’re setting up to manage those reservations?” Bucky nods and Gabe rolls his eyes. “That’s political. I’d bet SHIELD’s the one negotiating with the Fae leaders, making sure the Fae are keeping themselves in check, or that humans aren’t going nuts with Fae technology.”

Bucky shakes his head, thinking about the implications. “Fuck.”

They’re quiet for a minute, before Bucky straightens, pushing himself off the wall. “Where’s Zola now?” Neither he nor Charles had ever found even the slightest indication the man was alive, never mind in the US. “I tried to find him, once I remembered, but--”

“He’s dead, Sarge,” says Gabe quietly. “Died in ‘72.”

Bucky stares for a minute, once again feeling the rush of air past his ears, the accented voice in his head. Makes himself ask, “And the rest of his research? Stuff that wasn’t related to the Fae”

Gabe’s watching him closely, like he can tell what this is costing him. “At SHIELD, I guess,” says Gabe. “I kept doing translations, but after Director Carter took the Fae project away from him, he didn’t seem to do much. Sometime in the late 1960s he got real interested in computers, but that’s all.”

“Do you think that maybe you could help me get access to it?”

Gabe looks surprised. “Why would you want that, Sarge?”

“Hydra had me for a long time. When I escaped,” Bucky shrugs, “they lost a weapon, not the war. I’m trying to find them.” The wolf slides into his voice, “Hunt them.”

Gabe watches him for a moment, then nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

***

Later that evening, Bucky drives Gabe back to the airport. Gabe says, “That house was pretty big for one person, Sarge. You haven’t found a lady friend yet? Or a young man?”

Bucky looks away from the road, briefly. He raises an eyebrow at Gabe. “Young man?”

“What?” Gabe laughs. “You think you and the Captain were discreet?”

_Steve’s half-naked, laughing. The long line of his throat is covered in love bites, and the wolf’s a howl in his head--_

“Sarge? Sarge!” Gabe’s voice is urgent.  Bucky eases up on the steering wheel, which is starting to bend in his hands. He hits the brakes, suddenly too close to the car in front of them.

“It's fine,” Bucky says, when he gets his breath back.

“It's not fine, Sarge.” Gabe’s watching him closely. “You're whiter than usual.”

Bucky stays quiet for a few minutes, concentrating on his driving, before he risks another look over. “Just, you knew?”

“Yeah, Sarge.” Gabe’s expression is still worried, watching him for a minute. Bucky concentrates on trying to get his breath.

“I guess you tried to hide it, but the Captain, he was _loud_.” Gabe chuckles, “That leave in Paris? Jim cursed a blue streak. He was so hungover when you guys woke us up, I think he might’ve still been drunk. You guys, you tried, I guess, but we all knew.” He shrugs. “Only one it really bothered was Dum Dum.”

Bucky’s grateful for the red light at the next intersection. He slows, easing down on the brakes. “I don't. Like I said, I don't remember too good. Honestly? I thought I made it up.” He glances over at Gabe again.

“Oh, Sarge.” Gabe’s face is full of compassion. “No, you and the Captain fooling around, that was true.” Gabe pats him on the shoulder. “You got any other questions about the war-- you ask. I’ll tell you you everything I remember.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, May 31, 1991

Bucky meets Alison for late-evening burgers before they head out to the club. It’s their usual Friday night routine. When he comes in, he spots her pink hair tucked into a table in a back corner and heads to meet her. When he gets there, she’s already got a basket of fries and another of onion rings waiting.

“You’re late,” she greets him. “I already ate all the fried pickles.”

Bucky just laughs. “You’re a freak for liking those things.”

Alison shrugs, “And like I’ve said before, you’re obviously wrong about delicious, delicious pickles.”

He takes a seat across from her, looking her up and down. She’s paler than usual, light skin pasty under the lights and her make-up isn’t perfect. “Everything ok?”

She scowls and shakes her head. “No, not really.” She grabs a handful of fries, bites down on them viciously.

Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“Fucking--” Alison shakes her head. “My dad continues to be the worst caricature of a philosophy professor, ever. Now he's refusing to give my mom the money he promised for her last semester of school because,” and her voice goes high and ditzy, “Kristi is, like, _really down right now_ and needs a vacation to the Poconos to improve her spirits.” She drops back into her normal voice, “So, Danny and I spent the evening trying to console Mom, who just apologizes to us for everything and says it’s fine, she’s fine--”

She stops, drops her head into her hands, and Bucky watches her breathe in and out, asserting her control over her wolf. Finally she looks up again. “It's a good thing Cal ordered me not to see him because I would lose it." Alison smiles ruefully. "And he's probably ordered you not to help me hide the body.”

Bucky reaches over and pats her arm, pushes the basket of fries closer to her. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” she shakes her head. “It’s a shit situation. And the lawyers are taking their sweet time with the divorce.”

“Do you need some money for your mom?” Bucky’s already considering, he’s got his own loan for the business and his mortgage, but he can probably swing something.

“Nah,” Alison says, “but thanks. I ended up talking to Cal, he’s willing to give me a loan.” She laughs a little. “I think it’s mostly so I don’t kill anybody.”

The waitress arrives and they order their burgers. Bucky’s suddenly starving, digs into the onion rings as the waitress leaves. He looks up to find Alison studying him.

“What’s up with you?” she asks.

Bucky’s quiet for a minute, uncertain about what to tell her, but finally just says, “I ran into an old friend a couple of weeks ago. He came to see me yesterday.”

“Old friend?” Alison cocks her head. “I didn’t know you _had_ old friends.”

Bucky busies himself with the onion rings, then says. “Until recently, I didn’t.”

“Hmm.” Alison eats a fry and watches him. “He know?” She gestures between them and lowers her voice to barely a whisper. “About, you know. Wolves?”

Bucky nods, “Turns out, yeah.”

“It make you happy to see him?” she asks, “Or sad to see him so old?”

“Both,” Bucky sighs. “Definitely both. Brought back a lot of memories.”

Alison tenses, she knows what that can mean. “Memories of the war?” He’s never specified which one, and he always wonders which she’s thinking of when she says it. Even Vietnam was a long time ago, for her. She reaches over and grips his left bicep. “You gonna be ok?”

He closes his eyes, thinks about what Gabe said. “He gave me some… new context for some of my memories.” He grins a little. “Seems like I was pretty queer back then, too-- hooking up with some dude from my unit.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Dude, seriously? You guys must’ve been pretty sneaky, to get away with it.”

“Dunno,” Bucky says, considering. From what Gabe said, Steve had been the opposite of sneaky. “Sounds like they all knew, just looked the other way.”

“Does it help?” Alison asks, then clarifies, “Having someone who can confirm the memories for you?”

He shrugs, leaning over to grab the ketchup bottle.

“James,” she says, leaning forward. “We have been friends for five years. It’s okay that this is a big deal to you.”

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. “It’s not like now I have someone to confirm things with, the memories are flooding back,” he says, opening his eyes.

“But just having someone to talk about them with,” Alison looks hopeful, “that has to help, right?”

He looks down at the table, rubs his finger in ketchup that dripped, shrugs again. “The memories aren’t… it’s still just pieces, Ali. Probably always will be.”

“Were--” she cuts herself off. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Want to skip tonight?” she asks.

“No,” says Bucky, “I want to not think for a while.”

“We can make that happen,” Alison says with a grin. “We can definitely make that happen. But hey, stand up for a minute?”

Bucky gives her a look, but climbs to his feet. She slides out of the booth as well and says, “I’m going to hug you now. Just deal with it.” And she does, tightening her arms on him with wolf-strength, her head resting against his chest. Bucky freezes for a second, and then relaxes into it, hugging her back. He lets his cheek rest on her head, breathing in. Alison smells familiar and comforting, like Pack.

She leans back and looks up at him, wiggling her hips a little against him. Then she licks her lips. “Fuck it. I don’t really want to deal with Julia’s shit tonight, and Justin’s wake was last week, so everyone’s going to be depressed and angry. Let’s just go back to my place and hook up.”

Bucky had been looking forward to the club, the press of bodies and pounding music, but Alison’s right, a week after a wake the club’s always downbeat as shit-- no one has the patience to deal with poser straight kids and there’s usually a fight. He doesn’t want to have to break things up again. “Fuck.”

Alison wiggles again, and he catches her hips. “Why Ms. Marquette,” he says, fluttering his lashes at her, “are you trying to seduce me?”

“I’m trying to get laid, James,” Alison laughs and pulls away, taking her seat “and you know you love not having to hold back.”

Bucky grins, “Fucking someone with super strength-- definitely a turn-on.”

The waitress shows up then, and puts their burgers in front of them. When she leaves, Alison gestures to their plates, eyes bright. “Well eat up, big boy. If you’re going to fuck me properly, you’re going to need your strength.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, December 18, 1991

The phone wakes Bucky up, and he glances at the clock as he heads out to the living room to pick up the line. Nothing good ever happens at 4:30 in the morning.

“Sarge,” he hears when he picks up.

“Yeah, Gabe, what is it?” he yawns. He needs to be up in another hour anyway. He should have grabbed the kitchen extension so he could make coffee.

“I just got a call from Director Carter.” Gabe’s voice is rough, he sounds like he just woke up too. “Howard Stark and his wife were killed in a car accident tonight.”

Bucky starts, staring at the phone. “What?”

“Yeah, Carter said that there’ll be an investigation, and it will be in the papers tomorrow, but she wanted to let the Commandos know. I thought,” Gabe takes a breath, sighs out heavily, “I thought you should know too.”

Bucky sits down on the couch, slowly. He didn’t remember much about Howard, but Gabe has told him some stories and he remembers, above all, that Stark matters, that he is important. “She know when the funeral is?” Bucky asks.

There’s a crackle on the line before Gabe answers, “It’ll be in the paper, I imagine, either today or tomorrow. You aren’t thinking of going?” Gabe sounds surprised.

“No, just. He has a kid, right?” Bucky remembers pictures of a kid with dark hair and a big smile.

“Yeah,” Gabe says, and Bucky hears the creak of a chair, the sound of a glass being placed on a table. “He’s a teenager now, I guess. Went to college awful early, one of those genius kids.”

“Right,” Bucky says. He wedges the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, runs his hand over his face. “And the investigation? SHIELD leading it?” He keeps his voice casual, but his mind is already going a hundred miles an hour, considering the implications. Stark Industries is the premiere weapons contractor for the Defense Department. He and Gabe have talked about it, and Howard’s in the news about every other week. Gabe said it used to be every other day.

“Sounds like an agency catfight was brewing in the background, when the Director called.” Bucky can hear Gabe shaking his head. “Politics.”

Bucky leans forward on the couch, grabs the pen and clipboard that live on the side table, and clicks the pen open and closed a few times. “If SHIELD wins that fight, can you get me the report on the accident-- police report, SHIELD’s assessment?”

“What?” Gabe sounds surprised. “Sarge, that’s a big ask. This sort of thing is way above my paygrade.” And then, after a pause, “Why, what are you thinking?”

Bucky stares down at the paper, he can hear his voice turning grim. “I’m thinking Howard dying suddenly is probably in a few people’s interests, and Hydra might be one of them.”

“Well, shit. You have a nasty, suspicious mind, Sarge.” It’s quiet a minute, Gabe thinking that over. Then, “All right, I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though.”

Bucky pushes away the pen and paper, rubs at his eyes. “Thanks, Gabe, I appreciate it.”

The chair creaks again, then Gabe says, “I’ll probably go up for the funeral. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, February 13, 1992

Tony’s coming off a three-day coding bender, he woke up with his face smashed against his keyboard after about ten hours of sleep. He’s been awake long enough to check the time and call Gino’s for a large pepperoni and mushroom, extra sauce, extra cheese.

The knock on the door comes only fifteen minutes after he calls and, since he tips extra just to get the Gino’s guys out here, there’s no way that the knock on his door is pizza. On the other hand, what the hell else could it be? So he’s automatically digging in his jeans for his wallet when he swings the door open.

“You don’t have pizza,” he says, frowning, glancing up to the guy’s face and then, back down to confirm he isn’t holding a red and white box. Then he looks back up because, holy shit, this guy is gorgeous. Incredible blue eyes and short dark hair, and his lips… Shit, he thinks, ‘Play it cool, Stark.’

“No, I do not.” The guy’s voice has a smile in it when he responds.

“So, not from Gino’s,” Tony says. He gets caught on the guy's eyes again, they’re just so _pretty_ , but he also gets ready to slam the door. The press has pulled some dirty tricks before. The paps were circling like vultures the first few weeks after he got back from the funeral. His building has a fair number of little old ladies in it, though, and he’s learned not to underestimate their desire to be left alone. He once saw Mrs. Mahalingappa hit a photographer with a snow shovel; it was awe-inspiring.

This guy isn’t pulling a tape recorder out though, and he doesn’t seem to have a camera. He has a messenger bag, cheap grey nylon, slung over his shoulder and across his body, and he’s wearing a navy ski jacket over jeans and work boots. The only thing that distinguishes him from 90% of the guys wandering around Cambridge is that the left sleeve of his jacket is pinned up, like his arm stops above the elbow. And, of course, those lips. Tony makes himself look away from them quickly, trying to forget that the last time he saw a mouth that gorgeous mouth, he was watching porn.

The guy is just standing there, slush from his boots melting into the carpet, smirk on his face, and Tony leans against the door from the inside and says, “If you’re another fucking reporter--”

“Nope,” the guy shakes his head. “Not a reporter, either.”

“Huh.”

The guy laughs. “Look, we can play 20 questions until your pizza gets here, or I can come inside and talk to you for a few minutes. I promise I’m not here to hurt you, spy on you, or write about you for the papers.”

As far as Tony can tell, the guy is serious. He’s taller than Tony, but between Rhodey’s boxing lessons and the baseball bat stashed in the living room, Tony figures he can handle himself.

“All right. You have until my pizza arrives. Come in.” Tony looks down. “Leave your boots at the door.”

Tony leads them into the living room and kind of winces at the mess. There’s a bin of wire and circuit boards tipped over on the couch and his soldering kit is strewn across the floor. He thinks it smells. _He_ probably smells, and it’s all he can do to resist the urge to do a sniff test.

Tony clears off the couch, piling everything onto the coffee table in front of it and waves the guy to take a seat. He kicks the soldering kit under the coffee table, bending down and grabbing the socket wrench-- who the hell knows why that’s here.

“What’s your name, man? What do you want?” Tony collapses into a chair across from him. He wonders if it’s sex, and has to remind himself that he is _playing it cool_. Who even knows if this dude bats for the home team.

The guy leans forward on the couch, and he looks a little intense. “My name is James Phelan.”  

Tony yawns, belatedly covering his mouth, and says, “Okay, nice to meet you.”

“I wanted to offer my condolences, about your dad.” The guy pauses. “I knew him during the war.”

Tony stares. “You knew my father,” he says, flattening his voice.  “During the _war_ .” He clenches the socket wrench in his right hand, starts to tap it against his palm. “To be clear, you mean _World War II_.”

Phelan just nods. “Yes.”

Tony watches him for a minute. Phelan looks like he’s maybe a couple years older than Tony, might be a couple more than that. Objectively, there’s no fucking way the dude could _possibly_ have been alive in the forties. The thing is, though, Phelan doesn’t seem like he’s lying-- he’s intense, but not nervous.

Tony’s been spending a lot of time on alt.faery-tales-- he remembers reading something about the Fae having hella long lifespans. He leans forward and points the socket wrench at Phelan. “So I’ve been wondering about the Fae. Is it true you--”

“If you don’t ask, I don’t have to lie.” The dude smiles at him, and the skin around his eyes crinkles and that is _not fair_.

“But there would be a lie?” Tony shakes his head, frowning. “I thought Fae couldn’t lie!”

“Can’t they?” Phelan just looks at him and spreads out his arm, palm up.

Tony studies him for a moment, then leans back in his chair. “All right, so you knew Dad. During the war.” Jesus, he does _not_ want to talk about his father. “Thank you for your condolences. Was there anything else?”

“Yeah.” Phelan kind of winces as he says it. “What do you know about Hydra?”

“Really.” Tony scoffs at him. “Hydra? That’s what you’re going with?” He checks his watch. It’s time for the pizza to show.

“Yeah,” Phelan nods. “What do you know? I’m sure your dad said something.”

Tony feels his eyes narrow. He grips the arms of the chair. “They’re bad guys. Boogey men. Nazi scientific division, their leader was basically a cartoon villain called the Red Skull. Captain America defeated their evil plans, saved democracy, blah blah blah...”

The dude just looks shocked, which doesn’t make any sense. “ _That’s_ what Howard taught you about Hydra? That’s _it_?”

“ _Howard,”_ Tony spits out, “tended to spend his time yelling at me about how robotics was bullshit and waxing poetic about his boner for Captain America. I don’t know what _Howard_ talked with you about, but I learned about Hydra in school like every other kid in America.”

Phelan just looks kind of shocked. Tony tries not to hate him. “I honestly figured Howard would be smarter.”

“Well, he was drunk a lot of the time at the end there and MADD says alcohol kills brain cells.”

“Okay,” Phelan says, clearly trying to get the conversation back to wherever he wanted it to go. “Yes, Hydra was a Nazi science division. They developed weapons using supernatural means. Johann Schmidt was their first attempt at a superman, like Captain America.” He shakes his head at Tony. “Obviously, the attempt wasn’t a success.”

The dude sighs, then continues. “Steve did fly a plane into the ocean, killing Schmidt and stopping his plan to bomb America. But,” Phelan pauses, “this is the important part. He didn’t defeat Hydra, just drove them underground.”

So, clearly this guy is just nuts. Tony crosses his arms. “You can’t be serious.”

Phelan doesn’t even blink. If anything, he looks annoyed. “I’m completely serious.”

“Okay,” Tony leans back in his chair. “How do you _think_ you know this?”

“Because,” Phelan stops for a moment, then takes a breath. “Because Hydra captured me in 1945 and I escaped from them in the late 1960s. Because I’ve been tracking them for the last few years.” He pauses and waits for Tony to make eye contact with him. “And, because I’m pretty sure Hydra killed your parents.”

Okay, now Tony definitely hates this asshole. He jumps up and heads for the baseball bat then turns around with it in his right hand, ready to swing.

“My father got drunk and got behind the wheel of a car. He killed my mother and himself,” Tony grips at the bat. “All the conspiracy theories in the world don’t make him any less culpable for my mother’s death.” He takes a step forward. “Now, get the fuck out.”

“Okay,” Phelan just nods and stands up like its nothing. “If that’s how you want to play this.” He bends down and picks his messenger bag up from the floor. As Phelan  lifts the flap, Tony gets ready to swing at a recorder, or a gun, but the guy just pulls out a big manilla envelope.

“Feel free to look through this,” he says to Tony. “Or don’t.”

While Phelan pulls on a coat and boots, Tony keeps his distance. He’s careful to stand far enough away that Phelan can’t just jump on him or grab the bat. Phelan doesn’t do anything though, just ties his shoelaces.

“My phone number’s in there,” he says, reaching for the door.  “Enjoy your pizza.” Then he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, February 17, 1992

“Why the hell did I let you talk me into going to see that kid?” Bucky’s pacing around his small office upstairs at the gym, hand gripping the phone too tight.

He can hear the creak of Gabe leaning back in his chair. “Still hasn’t called you?”

“No,” Bucky growls, and then forces himself to put the phone down on his desk and hit the speaker button so he doesn’t destroy the handset. “You better be right about this, Gabe.”

“Look, Sarge,” Gabe says, voice pitched to soothe, “Tony is a smart kid, and he’s connected. Like I said, I really think he can help.”

Bucky runs his fingers through his hair. “If he goes to the cops--”

“He won’t.” Gabe’s voice is so confident.

“Fuck, how do you _know_ that?” Bucky asks, staring at the phone.

“Because if you looked up ‘curiosity killed the cat,’ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Tony Stark.” Gabe’s warm laugh comes down the line. “He’ll be in touch. And if he isn’t, you can say ‘I told you so’ for the rest of our lives.”

***

When he gets to the place Tony suggested, it’s close to 10. It’s pretty busy for a Monday night-- college kids packing the bar and the pool tables. Bucky grabs a beer, stakes out a booth where he can see the entrance, and tries to stay as calm. It isn’t easy-- Bucky’s on edge because he’s never shared this much information with anyone outside of Gabe and Charles. Add to that it’s the night before a full moon and to see the door he’s forced to sit with his left arm exposed to the room? Bucky’s practically jumping out of his skin.

“Fuck,” he mutters, then waves down the server for another beer.

Tony shows up a little after 11, wearing worn out jeans and a t-shirt with something Bucky thinks is a band name on it. He turns around a few times before Bucky can catch his eye, but then he gives a little nod before plunging into the crowd at the bar. Bucky keeps an eye on him as he eels his way up to the bar and orders them a couple of beers. He shakes his head as he listens to Tony hit on the bartender-- he hopes the kid tips well ‘cause his pick-up lines are for shit.

“Dude, you look like you’re going to kill someone,” Tony says as he sits down and drops two beers on the table between them. “You’re all Scowly McGee.”

Bucky looks at him, then very deliberately relaxes his posture, sprawling in his seat. He lets himself grin-- the one he’s developed to scare the shit out of newbie wolves who think that fighting the pack’s amputee for number 4 might be a good idea.

“This better?” he growls.

“Uh, not a lot, no.” Tony looks like he might piss himself. “Gotta say, not inspiring a lot of confidence here, dude.”

Bucky’s wolf likes the fear-scent that’s pouring off Tony, but if the kid’s too scared to talk, then he might be scared enough to run to the cops. So Bucky drops the grin, makes himself look more like some regular joe out with his buddy.

Tony watches him settle and lets out the breath he’s been holding. “So, uh, like I said on the phone, I read what you left.” He takes a sip of his beer, rolls the bottle between his hands. “Dude, how did you even get that file on my parents? It looks like the real deal, watermark on the photocopies and shit.”

Bucky takes his own sip of beer, studying the kid. “Did you look at the rest of it?”

Tony waves his hand. “Those newspaper articles?” At Bucky’s nod, he says, “Yeah, I guess.” He’s quiet a minute, thumb picking at the label on his beer bottle. “Reading between the lines, they, uh. Seems like those car accidents were,” he looks up at Bucky, “ _really_ similar to what happened to my parents.”

Bucky nods, running his thumb over the mouth of his bottle. “Yeah.”

“The tires blew out a lot like what happened with--” Tony closes his eyes and takes a sip of beer. Then he looks back over at Bucky again. “But, like. An oil exec in Dallas and a state rep in Detroit? Some random in Louisville? What do they have in common?”

“Aside from the way they were killed?” Bucky rests his stump on the table, leaning forward.  “State rep was trying to pass local clean water laws, and he was moving up in the party. Oil man, he was a whistleblower.” He takes a sip of his beer, puts the bottle down gently. “The guy from Louisville, he was working on something that would cut down on car emissions, make them a hell of a lot cleaner.”

Tony stops with his beer bottle at his lips. “What are you saying? My dad didn’t give a damn about the environment.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Don’t confuse the forest for the trees, kid.” Bucky glances around the bar, then back to Tony. “If you set aside _why_ someone wanted them dead, then all three of them died from the same kind of accident that took your parents.”

Tony takes a long pull at his beer. “So you think they weren’t accidents.”

“I think someone found a way to create the exact same kind of fatal car crash at least four times.” Bucky taps his fingers on the table, then straightens. “That kind of pattern? That’s not an accident.”

“At least?” Tony leans forward, pushing his bottle aside. “Dude, you realize that you’re trying to sell me conspiracy theories here, right? If you think someone is, what, like,” his voice cracks a little, “assassinating people by car accident, why don’t you tell someone.”

“Tell who, Tony?” Bucky cocks his head. “Like you said, everyone thinks Hydra are gone.”

Tony thumps his hand down on the table. “But these are _American citizens_ , dude.”

Bucky half smiles. “I’m an American citizen, _dude_. When I got away from Hydra, I was on US soil. My captors were American.”

“Fuck, really?” Tony’s staring at him, obviously disturbed.

“So,” Bucky says quietly, “now I’m telling you.”

“‘Cause you think they killed my dad.” Tony’s voice is flat.

“Because I’m certain they did.”

Tony stares at him. “All right. So you put all this together and you’re certain. Like I said, what do you want from _me_?”

“I want to know _why_ they came after Howard.” Bucky leans forward. “The timing is off. Everything I know, everything I can find-- He may have stayed close to intelligence after the war, but he spent most of his time making money. Military contracts, tech development, movies.” Bucky ticks them off on his hand. “Hydra left him alone for more than 40 years. Why kill him now? Simple opportunity?” He runs his fingers through his hair, tugs at it in frustration. “I don’t buy that. If they wanted him dead before, they would have found an opportunity. So this?” Bucky leans forward, taps the table. “This means something happened, something that put a target on his back.”

“And my mom?” Tony says bitterly, “She was just, what, collateral damage?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” He frowns. “Unless there was something going on with her, some part of her history that links to Hydra. I didn’t think about that. I can look into it.” He means it as an apology, but Tony just looks hurt.

“My mom--” Tony clears his throat, looks down at the table. “I mean, yeah, chances were it was just about him. I guess you can check, though.”

“Hey,” Bucky reaches over to tap Tony’s hand, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure” Tony says. He’s picking at the label on his beer bottle again.

Bucky figures he should give the kid a minute. “Hang on, I’ll get us another round.”

He heads to the bar, pushing easily through the kids and getting the bartender’s attention. He thinks the few minutes he’s gone are probably enough to give Tony a chance to regain his composure. When he gets back with the longnecks, though, Tony’s staring straight at him.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathes, “you’re Bucky Barnes.”

“What?” Bucky asks, startled, the bottles clinking loudly in his hand.

Then, when Tony starts even louder, “You’re--”

“Shut your mouth, kid,” Bucky growls, total command, and Tony’s jaw snaps closed. “You want to say shit like that we’re leaving.”

Tony just stares at him, then grabs one of the bottles from Bucky’s hand and drinks back half of it before he takes a breath. He finishes the rest of it in two more gulps, then gets up, grabs his things and heads for the door.

Bucky’s still staring at him when Tony turns back, “Aren’t you coming?”

***

Outside it looks like Tony’s going to lead them back to his apartment, but at this point, Bucky’s had enough. “Come on,” he says, and guides Tony over to the truck. When Bucky gets the door for him, Tony hops in without hesitation, displaying a lack of self-preservation Bucky finds disturbing. Tony barely even waits until they’re in gear before he’s talking.

“You are Bucky Barnes, right? I mean, my dad was obsessed with Captain America and I’ve seen, like, every photo, and Barnes was always right next to him and just now, at the bar, you looked _exactly_ like him. I mean _exactly_ ,” he pauses for breath, then says, “Ok, minus the arm.” Then, “Um. You know, you’re growling?”

Bucky does know he’s growling, and he just about manages to stop the car at a red light without crushing the steering wheel. He takes a breath, makes himself let go of the wheel, and flexes his fingers. He glances over at the kid, who’s staring like he’s matching up a mental photograph, then he looks forward and makes sure his eyes aren’t glowing. Shit.

“And back at my apartment, you said Steve,” Tony’s continuing, because the kid doesn’t seem to be able to shut up. “I mean, most people would have called him Captain America, or _maaaaybe_ Captain Rogers, but you called him Steve like you knew him.”

The light turns green and Bucky takes his foot off the brake. He eases onto the gas, makes himself drive a sedate five miles above the speed limit-- it’s Boston, that’s God damn sedate-- and not crush the steering wheel as the kid rabbits on.

“Dad didn’t really talk much about you, I mean, you-you or the Howling Commandos-you. Sometimes I managed to get Aunt Peggy to tell stories, but that was mostly when I was little.” And Tony _keeps going._ “Oh, man, does Aunt Peg know you’re alive? Is this some kind of conspiracy? That’s, like, right up her alley.”

Later, Bucky will be _extremely proud_ of himself for not crashing the truck. He’ll also be kicking himself for not thinking to ask Gabe how well Carter knew this kid. Damn it.

“Be. Quiet,” he growls, and he must be menacing enough because Tony blessedly shuts his God-damned mouth for as long as it takes for Bucky to drive the last two miles home to Medford and turn into the driveway.

When Bucky turns to look at him, Tony is also squished up along the passenger’s door, looking like he’s about to jump out and like he’s trying to remember every single thing he’s ever heard about the Fae. He actually says, “ _In nomine patri, et fili, et spiritu sanctum_ ,” and Bucky just stares at him for a second before he busts out laughing.

It works as a release of tension, which he definitely needed. When he can stop chuckling, he turns to Tony and says, “I’m fucking Catholic, kid. And as far as I know, scripture only works on demons.”

“There’s _demons_?” Tony bursts out in a high-pitched voice, then looks annoyed at himself. Bucky figures if Tony were a few years younger, he’d have covered his mouth.

“Yeah, demons are real and I’m not one.” Bucky sighs, looks up at the nearly full moon, then says, “Come on, get out. Let’s go inside. I promise not to eat you, kid.”

Tony watches him a minute and then he hops out, mumbling under his breath, “Well, that’s a shame.” He clearly doesn’t realize Bucky can hear him, and Bucky almost chokes trying not to laugh.

Once inside, Tony starts looking at everything, touching most of what’s not nailed down. It irritates the wolf, who sees it as a breach of territory, but Bucky’s getting the sense that this is just Tony’s natural curiosity. Bucky lets him look, goes and grabs a couple of beers from the fridge and the bag of pretzels. He puts them down on the dining room table and waits for Tony to stop exploring and come back.

“Tell me about Aunt Peggy,” he says, once Tony’s sitting down across from him.

“Nu-uh, dude. You need to come up with some info. A little give, a little take.” Tony drums his hands on the table. "Are you, or are you not, Bucky Barnes.”

Bucky sighs, drags his hand through his hair. “I am.”

“Seriously?! And you, like--” Tony stops abruptly, then says, a little more calmly, “fought with Captain America. Grew up with him.”

In asking the question, Tony looks almost… hopeful. Like he wants all the stories about Steve and Bucky to be true, the comics and that one Saturday morning cartoon.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Steve and I grew up together.”

Tony’s watching him pretty closely. His voice has a little bit of longing in it when he asks, “And you were best friends?”

“Yeah.”

Something relaxes in Tony, maybe, and then shifts, gets a little more serious, “and my dad-- you really worked with him during the war?”

Bucky shifts in his seat; his memories of Howard aren’t the most vivid. “Yeah, though he and Peggy mostly worked with Steve.”

“So after-- So you never saw Dad? You see any of the others from the Howling Commando days?”

Bucky looks down and away. “I’m in touch with Gabe Jones.”

“Really?” Tony’s eyes have gotten wide. “Professor Jones? His theories about how we learn language are so cool! I spoke with him at...” he trails off, remembering the last time he saw Gabe. Probably remembering why they’re talking right now.

Tony’s more subdued when he asks, “So, you’re what, like working with Professor Jones? To find Hydra?”

Bucky nods. “He’s the one that told me about your parents, got me the police report.”

Tony’s quiet for a few minutes, drinking his beer and crunching on pretzels. Bucky gets up and gets a couple more bottles, passes another over to Tony. Wonders for a minute whether he’s getting the kid drunk.

“So you wanted to know about Aunt Peg?” Tony takes a swig of the beer, then starts worrying the label with his thumb.

Bucky takes a seat across from him. “Yeah.”

“She’s in intelligence. Some super-secret agency, Dad never even mentioned the letters in front of me. She doesn’t talk about it, but I think she and Dad used to collaborate on things.”

“Collaborate?” Bucky gestures with his hand for Tony to go on.

“I don’t really know. They’d talk over my head when I was a kid, but since I went away to school-- Aunt Peg didn’t come by that often anyway. I’ve got no idea what they talked about.”

Bucky considers. “Can you find out the last time the two of them spoke? What they talked about?”

Tony says, “I can try, I guess,” but he looks a little doubtful.

“That would give me someplace to start, at least,” Bucky tries to be positive, make the kid feel better about this. “Help us figure out why Howard and why now.”

“So I can just tell her--”

“No!” it comes out with a growl that makes Tony jump.

“Chill, dude!” Tony holds up his hands. “I get you’re, like, deep cover and everything. I’m not going to rat you out.” He goes back to playing with the label. “I’ll just tell her I had questions about the war and what they did, go from there.”

“No,” Bucky says. “It’s too easy to slip. Tell her you were going through your Dad’s papers and you had a couple of questions, things you couldn’t understand. If you can actually go through his papers first, that will help.”

“Seriously? I’m not going to slip!”

Bucky sets his beer down with a clink. “Tony. My arm isn’t the only thing I lost to Hydra.” He catches Tony’s gaze, make sure he holds it as he says, “I’m telling you, if you can’t do this without keeping me, Hydra, and everything I’ve told you a secret, then you’re not just risking my life.” He lets Tony’s gaze drop, then says quietly, “Hydra is brutal. They catch you and best case scenario? They kill you.”

Tony swallows, and the fear-scent is back. “The best?”

“You’re smart, rich, connected. They turn you, they get everything they want.” Bucky smiles grimly. “Don’t think it can’t happen, either. Everyone has a breaking point, and they have weapons you’ve never dreamed of. Either we do this my way, or we don’t do this at all.”

Tony stares at him, eyes wide. Bucky thinks Tony’s gaze is maybe a bit too perceptive. He doesn’t ask any questions though, just says, “Ok. We do it your way. How do we stay in touch?”

“Call the gym, I’m the owner and I’m there pretty much every day. If I’m not there, you can leave a message to call you back.”

He stands up and gets Tony a glass of water, then watches to make sure he drinks it. “Now, come on. I’m taking you home.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, August 15, 1992

Tony’s sitting at Bucky’s dining room table and wondering if he woke up in the Mirror!verse. When he met them at the airport, Dr. Jones had seemed so _normal._

“So, just we’re clear,” Tony says, looking back and forth between them, “You want me to hack an agency that’s so deep cover most Americans don’t know it exists.”

He takes a drink of his coke and Dr. Jones looks down at his hands, right hand twisting the wedding ring on his left. “And you want me to hack into it because you think this super-secret agency, co-founded by my _dad_ , is complicit in a plot to kill my parents and, I don’t know, take over the world.”

“Not SHIELD,” repeats _Bucky Barnes_ impatiently, “Hydra.” Because Bucky Barnes is _alive_ and like a fucking conspiracy theory nutcase, only Tony’s half-convinced he’s not actually crazy.

“And Hydra’s in SHIELD like, I don’t know, the scorpion lurks at the bottom of a bottle of cheap Mezcal.” _Bucky Barnes_ rolls his eyes at him. Jesus, this is so weird.

Dr. Jones nods, totally backing up his friend’s crazy.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony says, and then watches, fascinated, as Bucky (Barnes? Bucky?) winces.

“Can you not, kid,” he says, and Tony’s not sure whether to be annoyed he keeps being called kid or to feel, like, excited that he’s got a nickname from _Bucky fucking Barnes._ Christ, he has to get a hold of himself.

At the same time, Dr. Jones says, “Lord’s name, Tony.” He’s so grave and dignified, Tony kind of wants to do everything he says. But only kind of. It’s the type of impulse he usually ignores.

“Seriously?” He shakes his head, looking back and forth at them again. “And somehow, because fuck my life, my partners in crime are two gen-u-wine Howling Commandos. And one of you somehow manages to be both Catholic _and_ Fae.”

Dr. Jones raises his eyebrows at Bucky, who just shrugs. Interesting.

Dr. Jones turns back to him and says calmly, “Be that as it may, Tony, we really do think something is going on here and we could use your help.”

“Again,” Tony flings out his arms, “to hack a _secret government agency_!”

“Yes,” says Bucky. And then he turns to Dr. Jones and says, “I really didn’t think he’d have so many scruples about this.”

That kind of manipulation is fucking weak sauce and Tony refuses to give in to it. He points at them. “You are obvious, you are _so_ obvious, I know exactly what you’re doing.” He can’t sit still anymore, stands up and paces. Jesus. “The head of a multinational corporation going to jail for _invading secure government servers_ seems like, I don’t know, a bad idea!”

While he paces, Dr. Jones start to laugh. “Tony, I may not have kept in touch with your dad, but Peggy sure did, and I have _heard stories_. I honestly don’t think this will be as hard as you’re making it out to be.”

“I don’t think this is going to be hard!” Tony shouts. He whirls and points at them. “I think this is going to be _actionable_! And if you know Aunt Peg, why--”

“We’re leaving Carter out of it for now,” Bucky cuts in. His voice is so reasonable, but Tony’s watching his hand and it’s clenched on the table. “We want her to keep her hands clean until we can go to her with specific intel.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “About my parents’ deaths.”

Bucky nods. “And anything else you can find.”

“Like holdover, deep-cover Nazis.”

“Yes,” says Bucky.

Tony throws up his hands in despair. Fuck. He gnaws on his lip, walking around Bucky’s small dining room, thinking about it. It would be a challenge. It might be a challenge that ends up with him in jail and fucking Obie ousting him from the board, but--

“I need a computer not connected to SI,” he says, and starts counting things off on his fingers. “T1 connection, server, snacks. I’m going to need snacks.”

Dr. Jones says quietly, “So you’ll do it?”

Bucky fucking Barnes just stares at him, like he’s trying to see into his very soul.

Finally, Tony says, “Yeah, okay. But if the G-men come after me, I’m naming names.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, August 23, 1992

Bucky and Gabe are sitting on the patio in the backyard, driven outside by the late August heat, made more miserable by the rack of computers Tony’s got set up in Bucky’s living room. Tony had agreed, eventually, to try hacking SHIELD, but he’d demanded that Bucky be the one to house their little computer arsenal.

It’s not ideal. The Pack are used to coming by for cookouts on summer evenings and Bucky had to fill Cal in on what was happening to keep them away. That hadn’t been a fun conversation. Now, he’s tense, irritable, and has no idea what’s happening in his living room. Tony stopped talking to them around noon yesterday, and Bucky’s pretty sure the kid hasn’t slept since he arrived on Friday night.

“Well,” Gabe says, “this sure isn’t like WarGames, huh, Sarge?”

Bucky looks over at him. “What?”

Gabe waves his glass of coke and his cigar. “I mean, that was all tense, and the computer talked.” He affects a strange, flat voice and says, ‘Do you want to play a game?’” Then, in his regular voice, “Haven’t you seen it?”

“I’ve seen it.” Bucky glares at him, annoyed. “Really, Gabe?”

Gabe’s laughing at him. “You seemed a mite grouchy, Sarge. I figured you needed to get out of your head a minute.” He takes a sip of his drink and smiles over the rim. “There’s nothing we can do until that boy finishes or falls over. You fretting about it isn’t going to help.”

Bucky has the edge of a memory of someone telling him the very same thing, long ago and far away. He shakes his head to clear it.

“Now,” says Gabe, “how many times do you think that boy has watched the entire run of ‘The Tiny Adventures of Cap and Bucky?’ Because that boy? Sarge, that boy has a little case of hero worship.”

Bucky growls, “That fucking show. I _hate_ that fucking show.” He looks over at Gabe, who’s just sitting there, grinning. Bucky takes a breath, and tries to see the humor in this-- sitting in the back yard, fretting about Howard Stark’s kid. He drags his hand across his face, then looks up again.

“I ever tell you that I killed a television because of that show?”

Gabe barks out a laugh, has to put down his drink. “I can’t say as you have, Sarge.”

“The show came out in, what, ‘80, ‘81?” Bucky shrugs. “I had just remembered a whole lot, from the war, from before. But it still didn’t all make sense.”

“Sarge,” says Gabe, voice soft.

“So, anyway,” Bucky says, determinedly moving on. “This show starts, and Min’s just the right age. She loves it. Makes me come over on Saturday mornings to watch it with her.”

Gabe raises a brow. “You were up early on Saturday mornings?”

“Shut it,” Bucky growls. Gabe just laughs. “Every fucking show, the ‘adventure’ starts when ‘Bucky’ does something fucking idiotic and ‘Cap’ has to save his bacon.” Bucky looks over at Gabe, “You remember the war. That square with about any-fucking-thing you remember about Steve? Anything?”

Gabe’s at least pretending to consider the question. “I mean, you were usually about two steps behind, Sarge, but yeah, the Captain, he was usually the one charging into danger.”

Bucky points at him, “Don’t think I don’t remember you and the rest of the boys another step behind us.”

Gabe grins, waving a hand for him to go on.

“Anyway, one morning, Min’d got up to get something from the kitchen, and I was maybe a little tired from staying out most of the night before.” Gabe waggles his eyebrows, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t even know what the stupid thing was, I just had it. They cut back from a commercial playing that fucking terrible theme song--”

Gabe’s trying to keep a straight face. “Catchy as hell, Sarge.”

Bucky glares at him, then drops his eyes to his beer. “And then little Cap looks out of the screen and says, ‘I sure do have to rescue Bucky a lot, don’t I kids?’” Bucky pauses, remembering how _angry_ he’d been, just God damn _furious_. “And before I knew it, I’d put my foot through the TV. And then I’m standing there, staring at the remains of the TV, while Min, in her little-girl voice, is reminding me that cartoons aren’t real.”

Gabe loses it then and there, laughs until there are tears streaming down his cheeks, and Bucky starts laughing too, big belly laughs. He doesn’t stop until he can hardly breathe and his stomach hurts.

***

Monday morning, Bucky’s up early to start the coffee before he has to go open at the gym. Tony wanders out of the living room, scrubbing at his hair, and leans against the kitchen counter, staring at the pot. Bucky watches him a minute, then says, “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and it ends on a bone-cracking yawn. “Good timing, man.” He yawns again, this time even bigger than the last, and Bucky winces. “I just finished burning the data to disks, and my program is wiping my digital fingerprints from the SHIELD servers as we speak.”

Bucky raises a brow. “Does that mean you got the information we need?”

Tony slouches a little more against the counter and says, “Well, I got a lot of information, from all over. But we need to analyze the data. It’s not like there was a file that said, ‘Secret Nazi Plans Here.’”

“Okay, I get that.” The coffee gurgles to a stop and Tony makes grabby hands at it. Bucky rolls his eyes. “Kid, you haven’t slept in 72 hours. There is no way I am giving you coffee.”

“But I want it,” Tony whines.

“Tony,” Bucky uses his sergeant voice, the one that always worked on raw recruits and continues to work on the new wolves he works with after hours at the gym. “Go to bed.”

Tony looks like he’s going to argue, so Bucky adds in a near-growl, “Now.”

“You’re no fun,” Tony mumbles, but he obediently turns around, and Bucky follows him to the small office where he’s got a cot set up. So far, Tony hasn’t done more than glance at it. Now, he throws himself down onto it, and Bucky watches to make sure his breathing evens out into sleep, before he heads back into the kitchen to make himself a to-go mug.

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, November 12, 1992

“Damn it,” Bucky curses, walking in a tight circle around his living room. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“I’m sorry, James,” Charles sighs on the other end of the line. “I’ve gone through everything your friend was able to give you. I can’t find anything that indicates SHIELD is using Dr. Zola’s research for anything other than political leverage on the Fae.”

“Damn it,” Bucky says again. He shakes his head. “That’s basically what Gabe and I came up with. There’s nothing that indicates someone is thinking in terms of a bigger picture.”

They’re both quiet for a minute. Bucky makes himself calm down a little, though the wolf is still feeling angry and thwarted in the back of his mind. “What about the information about werewolves?”

“Yes,” Charles says with satisfaction. “My father was happy to have that. They seem stuck on a lack of DNA evidence.”

“Well,” Bucky says irritably, “good to know someone is happy.”

“James,” Charles’ voice is warm. “We’ve been hunting for a long time, and we may hunt a long time yet. But we will find them.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “I hope you’re right, Charles.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, October 10, 1999

The smells are strange and wrong. The bed is too soft. The bed is what’s waking him, but he’s caught in the dream, a voice saying, _“Where are you?”_

The voice, he knows that voice, and he’s reaching for it. “Steve?”

He’s more aware now, of wrong smells-- of sex and clean skin and CK one. It’s wrong, this is all wrong, no scent of unwashed men, bed too soft when it should be lumpy blankets. It scares him, and he growls, reaches out with his left hand. His hand’s not there…

Bucky rolls too fast and ends up on the floor, scrambling away from the bed, and the room smells of fear and semen and strange cologne. The lights click on as he tries to figure out where he is, how he knows that smell, and he reflexively throws a hand up to shield his face.

“What the FUCK, asshole?”

The guy is naked, tangled dark hair falling to his shoulders. He’s standing on the other side of the bed, edging back towards the door. Bucky hears someone else stirring in the house, a voice calling, “You all right? Kevin?”

Bucky rubs his hand over his face, tugs it through his hair trying to dispel the dream. He looks up again and says, “I’m sorry--”

Which is as far as he gets before the guy starts yelling. “You’re sorry? Shouting some other dude’s name? What was-- were you growling at me? You fucking freak! Get the fuck out!”

Bucky steps back, steps on denim, and it’s enough to bring him back to now. He straightens, puts up his hand and says with as much authority he can muster, “I’m just going to put on my pants and I’ll go.”

The room is silent, thick with tension as he does that, shimmying into his pants and thanking God he sees his shirt right by his feet. Dressed, he says, “I’m going to leave, now,” and the guy shuffles away from the door.

When Bucky gets just outside the bedroom door, he says, “I’m sorry.” Then he forces himself to walk to the door, grab his sneakers, and head out to find his truck.

Instead of going home, Bucky drives barefoot to Alison’s neighborhood. He uses his key to let himself into her apartment, the second floor of a multi-family home. He can smell she’s alone, but she sleeps through him coming in. It worries him-- she needs better situational awareness-- but he forces himself to ignore it, the only threat nearby is him. There’s a big afghan on the couch that belonged to her grandmother. He curls up on the couch and wraps it around him, comforted by the scent of Alison and the faint, plasticky smell of the scratchy yarn.

Next thing he knows, the sun is hitting his face and there’s a noise coming from the other room. He starts to struggle out of the confining blanket when he hears Alison murmur, “I’m just making coffee, James,” so he burrows back down into her crappy couch until she comes out of the little kitchen. She pushes at him until he makes enough room for her to sit next to him, then he snuggles on top of her.

Her hand strokes through his hair and he can smell coffee brewing, hear the drip of the water through the filter. He lets his hearing extend out, to the family downstairs, the couple upstairs, the sounds of car doors slamming and cars starting-- it’s Sunday and people are going to church.

“What happened?” Alison asks. Her hand keeps stroking.

“Bad dream,” he tells her. “Didn’t know where I was, when it was. Strange smells.” Then, “Guy objected to me saying another man’s name in my sleep.”

“You get aggressive?” she asks, voice even.

“No,” he snorts. “I was too worried about where my arm was.” God, he feels like shit. “Could have, though. I scared him.”

Alison’s arms come around him, her face nestles in the space between his neck and his shoulder. “Scared the shit out of yourself, too, didn’t you?”

He nods once, curls up tighter.

She stays there, hugging tight, and it helps. She doesn’t let go until he finally starts to uncurl, then she says, “I’m going to get us coffee, okay? And then we are going to talk about when and how to be safe hooking up with randoms.”

He nods, leaning up to kiss her cheek. “Two sugars, please.”

She shakes her head, gripping the arm of the couch as she pushes herself up. “Like I could forget.”

 

* * *

 

New York City, June 14, 2003

Tony wakes up slowly, shoulder being shaken with too much force. He waves a hand weakly trying to make it stop.

“Tony,” says someone. It’s a male voice, familiar, and it makes him blink his eyes open. He’s caught in startling blue eyes and, _God_ , they are just, “So pretty,” he says. “Come to bed, baby, there’s plenty of room.”

He wiggles a little, trying to be enticing, but bumps into another person, wonders how much room there really is in the bed, and blinks his eyes open a little more.

Bucky is looking _distinctly_ unimpressed.

“Kid, there is no fucking way I am joining you.” Bucky says flatly. He takes a deep breath. “It smells like a bordello in here and,” he nods to the bed, “I think you already have all the company you need.”

Tony leans over and looks left, trying to focus on the two people sharing the bed with him. The blonde woman is half-covered and her friend, who he vaguely remembers asking to be called Chris, is burrowed into the sheets like he’s freezing. Huh.

“If I’d known you were coming, old man,” Tony says, trying to be cool about all of this. He promised himself he would be cool, and this is the opposite of cool.

Bucky doesn’t roll his eyes or laugh. “Tony,” he says, and _shit_ , “You called me yesterday and left half a dozen fucking voicemails. I made a _special trip_ to the city on my fucking day off.”

“Um,” Tony says. _Shit._

Beside him, Chris burrows deeper into the blankets and says, “For fuck’s sake, have your domestic somewhere else, dudes.”

Bucky growls. As usual, Tony finds that to be disturbing as fuck.

Chris freezes, peering out from his little blanket fort and says in a much more respectful tone, “Or we can leave. Right, Rosie? C’mon honey, let’s go.”

Tony rolls over and watches Chris bully the apparent Rosie up and into a sheet. The two of them head out the bedroom door, closing it gently behind them.

Tony starts to speak, but Bucky holds up a hand. “Keep going,” he growls towards the closed door. In response, there’s a startled squeak and Tony can hear the sound of two people running on the hardwood floors.

“Jesus,” Tony says, before he remembers how much that annoys Bucky, and then, “Fuck, I’m sorry, look--”

Bucky’s got his right arm crossed over his chest and gripping his left bicep, and his expression is grim. Tony tries to hold his gaze, but he ends up staring down at the carpet instead. It appears to be covered with whatever he was wearing yesterday, someone’s neon yellow bra, and, he squints, maybe a merry widow? Huh.

“Tony,” Bucky finally says. “Was there a reason that you called me here?”

Tony puts his hands to his temples, trying to rub at the ache there. Then he gives up and slides his hands to cover his eyes. “I don’t remember.” He risks a glance up, but Bucky catches his gaze, so he trains his eyes right back down to the floor.

“That’s just great.” Bucky’s voice is rough. Tony can hear a tight thread of anger beneath the words. “I know you CEOs get to do whatever the fuck you want--”

‘Really?’ Tony thinks. Bucky’s met Pepper.

“--of us don’t actually get a lot of time off--”

Is this a guilt trip? He gets a guilt trip for… ok, admittedly, forgetting why he asked Bucky to come up here, but if there’s coffee, he’ll remember and--

“Hey!” Tony says, and Bucky _snarls_.

Tony freezes. Humans can’t _make_ sounds like that. He’s never even heard _Bucky_ make a sound like that. He listens as Bucky starts taking some seriously deep breaths. _Fuck_.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, and his voice is carefully controlled. “All right, clearly I’m not going to be able to keep my temper.” He takes another deep breath. Tony carefully traces a pattern on the floor with his toe. “I’m going to go downstairs to the Starbucks over on 52nd. I’ll be there for an hour and then I’m leaving.” Tony risks another glance up. Bucky’s staring over his head at the lamp. When Tony turns to follow his gaze, it appears to be covered in three different pairs of panties.

Bucky _hmmms_. “You remember what it is you wanted to talk to me about, you come find me.” Tony turns slowly back to look at him, trying to make the movement as smooth as he can, head aching anyway. “I’m leaving in an hour, though.”

Tony stays quiet as Bucky walks out the door, but when he can’t hear his footsteps anymore, Tony just starts swearing. “Fuck. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_.”

***

It takes Tony 30 minutes to make it to the Starbucks, including a short detour to the kitchen to make coffee and listen to Happy apologize because Bucky got past him. Given that Happy ’s got hickies all over his neck and half his suit appears to be missing, Tony just shakes his head.

“It’s fine, Happy, just--” Tony looks around the kitchen. It’s trashed. “Do me a favor and get rid of our guests and call housekeeping, please.”

“You going out, boss?” Happy looks worried.

Tony closes his eyes, takes another sip of his coffee. “I need to try and deal with this.” He looks over at Happy, says, “You know I’ll be fine for 3 blocks. I’ll send you a message when I’m done.”

“All right, boss,” Happy half-nods, clearly not pleased that he’s being left behind. “ I’m on it.”

Tony heads out in a t-shirt and jeans, jams on his sunglasses as he heads over to his least favorite of the Starbucks in a 10 block radius. Because he is an _asshole,_ Bucky is sitting outside in what is, probably, the brightest patch of sun he could find _._ He’s wearing a Mets cap and sunglasses, sipping a drink.

“I’m just going to grab a coffee,” Tony says as he walks by. He probably only gets away with it because Bucky wants to keep up a cover.

When he gets back outside, clutching the sweet, over-roasted nectar of life to his chest, Bucky hasn’t moved. Of course, this means Tony has to sit facing the sun. Even with his shades on, this is bullshit.

“Dude,” Tony sits down. “I know you’re pissed but this is a dick move.”

Bucky looks at him from behind his own sunglasses and shrugs. “You want to tell me why I drove 4 hours and am paying a fucking fortune to park my truck?”

Tony sighs. He’s really, really not excited for this conversation. “We should probably walk and talk. You know,” he waves his coffee, “for security.”

Bucky makes a show of looking at him over the top of his glasses, then he nods. “Let’s go.”

“So, I had another go at SHIELD.” Tony digs in his pocket and hands over a flash drive. “Their computer systems are weird.”

“Weird how?” Bucky asks, steering them uptown.

Tony takes a swig of his drink and considers. “Every time I go in, everything is in a different place.”

“And that’s not normal?” Bucky asks, watching the crowd up ahead.

“No, you don’t rearrange your servers that often,” Tony tells him. Then, “Are you just not going to look at me?”

Bucky glances over, then immediately looks straight ahead.

“Look,” Tony says, “I’m sorry, but, like, get over it. Shit happens.” He waves a hand around, as they reach the entrance to Central Park. “Not like there isn’t shit to do in New York while you wait.”

He looks over at Bucky again, and the coffee is clearly starting to work, because he can tell that Bucky is… tense. His shoulders are up too high, his posture is wary and his eyes are up, scanning the horizon behind his sunglasses. He’s standing to Tony’s right, keeping his left arm between them, and Tony starts to think that maybe there’s more going on than he thought.

“Old man?”

“What?” Bucky snaps.

Tony stares at him, and even though Bucky is looking away he must sense it. When he turns,  what Tony can see of his face, under the hat and the sunglasses, looks grim.

“You look-- Are you ok?”

Bucky turns and walks further into the park, clearly expecting Tony to follow. His stride is stiff, too-fast, and Tony has to work to catch up. Damn it.

Eventually, they make it to Umpire Rock, and Bucky starts climbing. Tony’s fairly certain that Bucky’s not doing this to be an asshole, but he’s sweating and cursing by the time he catches up and reaches the top.

When Tony sits down next to him, Bucky leans over, wrinkling his nose. “You still smell like a fucking brothel, kid.” But he stays close. “Do you know how many fucking cameras there are in Manhattan?”

Tony glares at him. “A lot.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “And since the towers came down there’s a hell of a lot more of them and people look at the tapes a hell of a lot more closely. Boston’s bad enough. This is--” He takes a breath, visibly trying to relax. “I don’t want to come here for no fucking reason. It’s too dangerous.”

“You-- Really?” Tony can’t help but be a little annoyed. “Old man, you are fucking paranoid. You have got to relax.”

Bucky leans back, face dark. “Fuck you, Tony.”

“Come on!” Tony says, voice starting to get louder. “This is nuts.” He waves his hand around. “In the however many years I have been helping, we have found exactly nothing that indicates a,” he drops his voice, makes air quotes, “‘secret plan’ for world domination. Maybe there’s nothing there!”

Bucky stares at him. “That what you think, Tony?”

“I don’t know, maybe?” Tony throws up his hands. “But people can’t live like this. Paranoid all the time. It’s crazy.”

One minute, Bucky’s sitting next to him, clearly upset. The next, without Tony being able to track back the movement, he’s on the ground in front of the rock. He looks up and says, “See you around, Tony,” before he heads back toward the entrance of the park.

“Shit,” Tony says, knowing there’s no way he won’t draw attention to them if he tries to follow. He rubs the back of his neck, watching Bucky walk away. “Son of a _bitch_.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, November 22, 2005

It’s Gabe’s granddaughter Genevieve, the one one who Bucky had seen years ago at Min’s graduation, who calls and lets him know that Gabe is dying. She’s blunt about it, which he appreciates. “Grampa’s not happy I’m making this phone call,” she tells him, “but the doctors gave him only a few weeks.”

Bucky feels a roaring in his ears, has to sit down hard at the desk in his office at the gym. “Thank you for telling me,” he manages to get out.

She’s quiet for a minute, before she says, “If you can visit him, I know he’d like to see you. And if you can’t, you can call him at my mom’s house, she’s the one looking after him.”

She gives him the number and hangs up quickly-- he wonders briefly how many of these calls she’s made already, how many she still has. There was something practiced in the way she’d spoken.

Bran says the first crisis comes for a werewolf when he loses the last person from before he was Changed. He says that suicide rates skyrocket. Wolves walk into the nearest body of water, let themselves sink until they drown. Or, they find silver somewhere, and expose themselves until it kills them. Werewolves may be hard to kill, but they’re also fucking stubborn. To try to combat this, Cal’s given the wolves over 75 standing orders to notify him of the impending deaths of friends and family. Feeling sick to his stomach, Bucky calls Cal to let him know.

He also calls Tony, and is almost shocked when he reaches him-- they’ve been “missing” one another fairly often for a while.

“You going to visit him?” Tony asks, voice too casual.

Bucky’s still sitting in his office, and he closes his eyes, picturing Gabe the last time he saw him. “You know I can’t do that, Tony.”

Tony hums, and in the background Bucky hears people laughing, talking. “You mean you’re too worried about the boogey man to do that.”

Bucky folds over, hand too tight on the phone, he can hear the plastic straining. Takes a deep breath and says, “You should call him, Tony. He’d like that.”

As he hangs up, he hears, “He’d like to see you before he _dies_ , old man.”

***

He talks to Gabe as much as he can, and a steady stream of packmates visit him either at the gym or at home. It’s nice, Bucky supposes, though after a week of this he calls Cal. “I need a little space.”

Cal must be outside, Bucky can hear the distant sound of the wind through the trees. Cal hums. “I understand, but I’d like to have Alison stay with you.”

Bucky sighs. “This for me?”

“Well,” Cal says, and Bucky can hear the smile in his voice, “Her dad is trying to reconcile again. The holidays, you know.”

Bucky growls. Alison has tried to reconcile with her father exactly once, and, when he hit on a 20-year-old waitress right in front of her, she nearly put the man in the hospital. “So this is a two birds, one stone kind of deal?”

“You’re both important to us, James.” Bucky looks out the window at the frost covering his lawn, frowning. “So it’s either this or you continue to receive two visitors a day.”

***

Alison moves in two days later, growling about meddling Alphas and her fucking father. Eventually, Bucky demands she come to the gym. “You’re wound so tight you’re about to explode,” he tells her bluntly, “and it’s not helping.”

She’s quiet for a minute, looking up at him from where she’s curled up on the couch. “You’re an asshole,” she tells him.

“Yeah,” he says, grinning, “go put on your gym clothes .”

The call comes the next week, right before Christmas. Bucky makes arrangements to send flowers to the funeral and donates money to the college fund they’re setting up in Gabe’s name. When Alison comes home from work that day, he’s still sitting on the couch, staring down at a picture Gabe’d given him of the two of them standing by the Frog Pond in the Commons. Someone had snapped it for them years ago.

Alison knows immediately, can probably smell the grief, and she sits down beside him. She plucks the photo out of his hands, looking at it briefly before laying it down on the coffee table. Then she curls around him, arms tight around his shoulders and his waist. He buries his face in her shoulder and lets himself breathe and shake, tears finally, finally streaming down his face.

***

Alison won’t stop hovering. She sticks to him like glue the whole week after Gabe’s death, skipping Christmas dinner with her mother and brother and even going to church with him the next Sunday. Finally, when Bucky gets up late one night, unable to sleep, and finds her sitting at the dining room table sipping cocoa, he snaps. “What, do you think I'm going to drown myself in the bathtub?”

“I'm more worried you'll walk into the Charles and let yourself sink,” she retorts, and then covers her mouth.

Bucky sits down next to her, rests his elbow on the table and leans his hand on his fist. “Nah, ” he brushes her arm gently with his stump so she looks up over him. “This hurts, Ali. But, no” he says quietly, “I got lucky to find Gabe a second time. I can't be sad about that.”

Alison curls as close as she can on the wooden chairs, wrapping her arms around him. “You should tell me about him,” she says.

They sit on the couch and he ends up telling her too many stories-- things he remembers, things Gabe told him about the Commandos, about Steve. Curled tight into her, he forgets to be cautious and says names and places he’s never mentioned before. Alison hugs him tighter, then brings her hand up, tilting his lips down until they're kissing, deep and comforting.

“Come to bed with me?” Bucky asks, finally talked out, and Alison smiles and nods.

The next morning, as they’re leaning over a breakfast of too-dry scrambled eggs and slightly burnt bacon, Alison says casually, “Your friend was Gabe Jones, right?”

Bucky looks down at the top of her head and frowns.

“And you mentioned Steve last night,” she says, scraping jam onto underdone toast.

He makes a face. Then admits, “Yeah.”

She nods. “Okay.”

He's a little surprised, Alison rarely backs down from anything and likes to make sure they’re on the same page.

She eats a bite of toast then glances up at him. “I don't _always_ need everything spelled out you know. I’m _used_ to reading the subtext.”

Bucky watches her as she reaches across the table to grab the paper. “It has to be a secret, Alison.”

She looks up again, and says, “Obviously, James.” She leans close and kisses his cheek, whispers, “Your secret’s safe with me.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, July 20, 2006 

The funeral is terrible, the pack raw with grief at the loss of their Alpha. Bucky sits in a pew toward the front of the church, Alison next to him, tense and shaking. She’s clutching his hand so hard it might be broken by the end of the service. Up at the lectern, Bill is giving a eulogy, trying to put Cal’s life, Cal’s leadership into words. In the back of his mind, Bucky’s wolf is an endless, shivering howl.

The pastor invites anyone who wants to come up and speak. A few of his packmates tell stories about Cal-- his patience, his love for the water and his boat, his joy when the Red Sox finally won the pennant. Cal’s granddaughter talks about his devotion to his family. At this, several of the younger wolves break down and have to step out.

After, standing out in front of the church with sun beating down on them, Alison sniffs and rubs her hands under her eyes, wiping away the tears. “It’s been a long time since I had to go to a funeral, James. I forgot how fucking awful they are.”

“I know, Ali,” He hugs her tightly, until some of her tension fades. “At least we’re not going to one a week any more.”

She nods against his chest, then steps back. “Why the fuck wasn’t he wearing a life vest? He’s a fucking alpha, he knows basic water safety.” She throws up her hands. “It’s not like we can swim.”

“He’d been sailing the bay for longer than you’ve been alive,” Bill says, walking over to them. “It was always been something he loved. And he was always safe.” He offers Alison a sad smile and she gives him a hug.

Bucky just stands there, feeling uncertain. Cal wasn’t someone Bucky would expect to be stupid. And Bucky doesn’t believe in accidents.

Bill coughs, catching his attention. “We’re having a wake down at the Wolfhound.”

“At six, right?” Bucky shifts, sweat sliding down his back.

Alison nods at Bill. “We’ll be there.”

“Good.” Bill watches them for a minute, then says, “Isaac asked me to tell the pack he wants to talk to everyone, one-on-one.”

Bucky cocks his head. “Get to know everyone as the new Alpha?” He considers, looking over to where Nathan and Matt, the new wolves Bucky’s training, are hunched over and sharing a smoke. “It’s a good idea, everyone’s pretty freaked out.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.” Bill nods over to where the kids are standing, looking awkward.  “You want to talk to them?”

“Sure,” Bucky says. He turns to Alison, “You gonna be ok?”

“Yeah,” she says, and takes Bill’s arm. “Bill will keep me company.”

***

When they hear about the meetings, the kids are nervous. Bucky tries to reassure Nathan and Matt that meeting is just a good opportunity to get to know their new Alpha, but they still look scared. Isaac Owens has only been with the pack for a couple years and he’s mostly kept to himself. Aside from attending pack meetings, runs under the full moon, and taking mandatory hand-to-hand training from Bucky at the gym, Isaac hasn’t spent much time with other pack members. To be fair, this had started to change about a year ago, when Isaac challenged Bill to become Cal’s second, but he still isn’t a known quantity.  

After Cal’s accident, Charles told Bucky that Bran actually considered appointing Bill as the new Alpha. Bill’s solid, he’s been with the pack for nearly 70 years, and he knows how to keep things running. But Isaac was the pack’s second, and apparently he talked Bran into giving him a try. Now, Bucky just wonders how things are going to change. He and Isaac have never been fond of one another-- different personalities, different views of the world. It’s the sort of thing that can, eventually, drive wolves from a pack. Bucky has no intention of moving somewhere else and starting over. And he’s got _no_ interest in becoming Alpha, although, he thinks he could beat Isaac if he really had to.

All this has been twisting in his gut for the whole week following Cal’s funeral. Bucky’s been tense and snappish. The morning of his meeting with Isaac, he goes on a run, trying to get it out of his system, but it doesn’t do much. He’s still on edge when he arrives at the pack house.

When Bucky walks into the Alpha’s big, dark-paneled office, it smells of Cal and old fires. For a moment, Bucky is hit by a wave of longing so deep it jolts him.

“Yeah,” Isaac says, sympathetically. “Hit me like that too.” It’s a bright July day and his dark skin is gleaming in the light from the windows. “This wasn’t anyone’s plan.”

“No, no it wasn’t,” Bucky shakes his head and tries to remind himself that this is true. Alison’s right, he’s gotten out of the habit of expecting funerals, and after Gabe’s death, he thought it would be a long time before another person he loved died. He stares out the window, taking a few deep breaths. Then he turns back to Isaac and says, “So, what did you want to discuss, Alpha?”

It’s a good reminder, for both of them. Isaac half-grins and shakes his head. “You’ve always been good at that, pulling us out of our heads.”

“Gotta be settled before a fight,” Bucky says. He thinks he used to say that to Steve, trying to teach him how to throw a punch. An ache tugs at him-- he’s been remembering the dead a lot these days. He sets it aside, looks up, and sees Isaac watching him. He drops his eyes.

Isaac smiles a little sadly. He waves at Bucky to sit down and takes a seat behind the desk. Cal rarely used the desk or the chair, Bucky wonders if that makes it easier for Isaac to use now.

“So,” Isaac clears his throat, “you know I’m asking everyone to come talk to me. Kind of a ‘get to know your Alpha’ thing.” His smile is sardonic, but Bucky likes the confidence in his voice. At least Isaac’s not worried about being the Alpha. “It’s a chance to tell me anything I need to know.”

“Yeah,” Bucky nods, sitting in one of the chairs facing Isaac. “The kids were nervous, I told them not to worry.”

“Yeah, James,” Isaac smiles at that. “The newbies are fine.” His voice turns serious. “When I spoke with Bran, he mentioned you and Charles working together on something.” Isaac watches him narrowly from across the desk. There are two things Charles is known for among the packs: financial wizardry and acting as his father’s enforcer when Alphas cannot, or will not, discipline their packs.

Bucky looks down at his clenched fist a minute, trying to get his temper under control. ‘Fuck you very much, Bran.’

“You having money problems at the gym?” Isaac asks, voice shading to concern. “Because this pack takes care of its own.”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head, “the gym is solid. Charles and I are working on,” he sighs, looks down for a minute, “something else.”

Isaac’s face turns grim, and he flattens his palms on the desk, like he’s planning to rise-- or jump over it. “I wouldn’t have expected you to be a snake in the grass, Phelan. You spying on your own pack?”

“What?” Bucky’s eyes narrow and his muscles clench. He’s hyper-alert, suddenly, both at the accusation and the threat of violence. In the back of his head, the wolf whines. “You think I’m-- no!” He puts his hand up. “It’s nothing to do with the pack.”

Isaac narrows his eyes at Bucky. “That is damn close to a lie, wolf.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, tries to will himself to calm, but he’s well aware that this could easily turn violent. He forces himself to look down, to tilt his throat slightly toward Isaac, trying to placate him. In the calmest voice he can manage, he says, “Some time back, when I was in Portland, I identified a threat to the Packs.”

“Packs, plural?” Isaac’s eyes are glowing and his hands are fisting on the desk.

“Yeah.” Bucky nods. “A group of… I guess today you'd call them terrorists, maybe?” He shrugs, wondering where Hydra fits into today's taxonomy. “Know about werewolves, about what we can do.”

Isaac’s scenting the air as he talks, clearly trying to figure out if he’s lying. The wolf growls at the lack of trust, and Bucky tries to keep calm. “This group, they have access to our government, inside knowledge, and they are extremely interested in the super soldier serum.” That's a risk, he knows, mentioning anything related to Steve. He runs his fingers through his hair, then forces himself to continue. “Charles and I have been tracking them for years, trying to figure out where they are, what they’re doing.”

“And Cal knew about this?” Isaac’s voice is a growl.

“Yes.” Bucky bites off. “Of course he knew. You didn’t give me the chance to tell you.”

Isaac stands up suddenly, the motion shaking the solid wood of the desk. Bucky fights the instinct to rise, to meet the threat on his feet, but Isaac stays behind the desk.

Bucky’s hand is clenched, nails digging into his palm, and he bites the inside of his cheek, blood running salty over his teeth. He tracks every movement Isaac’s making, minute shivers running through Isaac’s body as he fights back the change. In the back of his mind, the wolf tells him there would be no better time to leap, to fight. That they could kill Isaac, who doesn’t trust them, and the pack would be theirs.

And then something tips. Isaac drops his hands by his sides, shoulders starting to subside. He pulls in deep breaths, and when he looks up, his wolf has retreated, eyes no longer shining gold. “Swear to me, that you will not harm the pack,” Isaac says.

Bucky watches him another moment, his own wolf still tense, and then says, “I swear I will do nothing to intentionally harm the pack.”

Isaac growls a little. “Intentionally, huh?”

Bucky feels his mouth pull into a faint, sad smile. “I don’t know the future, boss. But I am trying to do everything I can to _protect_ the pack.”

Isaac takes another minute before he nods, a short sharp jerk of his head. “You tell me if you find this group. _Before_ you take any action.”

Bucky considers-- Isaac’s not _quite_ given him an order. He can disobey if need be.

“Okay.”

Isaac looks at him and says, “All right, anything else?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Not right now, boss. Not right now.”

 

* * *

 

New York City and Boston, MA, May 21, 2008 

When Tony goes missing, Bucky finds out like everyone else: when it hits the evening news. Except, Bucky figures that there's a whole lot more to what’s happening than the unexpected attack on a caravan being discussed on the news. Instead, he's actually pretty sure that Tony's dead, because he's seen how modern warfare plays out. He calls Jarvis to ask what’s happening at Stark Industries and to figure out who knows what. Jarvis routes him to Pepper.

Up until this point he's only interacted with her a handful of times-- enough to be impressed by the way she puts up with Tony. Now, when he offers to help, she's quiet. Then she asks if Bucky can get to New York.

He meets her there a few days later, not at Stark Industries HQ but at a little apartment. Hers, apparently, although, as far as he knows, Tony's semi-permanent in Malibu these days. She pulls out a piece of tech-- a cross between a laptop and a PDA that has 'Tony Stark prototype' written all over it-- and then she calls up Jarvis.

“I think he's still alive,” she tells him, though Bucky can tell she's shakier in that belief than she'd like to be, “and I want to know if anyone from SI sold him out.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow-- Ms. Potts has never struck him as being that kind of thinker-- but he approves. “Okay, Jarvis, you working with me?”

His wolf gives a growl, like it always does, when the bodiless voice answers.

“I can devote 12.9% of my processing power to this, Sergeant,” Jarvis says. “The rest will be divided between scanning satellites to locate Mr. Stark and helping Ms. Potts manage Stark Industries in his absence.”

“How long?” Bucky asks Pepper, nodding to the sleek tablet she’s holding.

“As long as you need it,” she says. “You know what you're looking for, James, and I can access Jarvis through the house. But, I want check-ins.”

Bucky considers this for a minute. “Face to face is safest, I can meet you here every couple of weeks.” She makes a face at that. “Or?“

“Jarvis can update me.”

“No,” Bucky shakes his head. “Jarvis-- pardon me, Jarvis-- can get hacked.”

Jarvis says, “No offense taken, Sergeant. It is unlikely, but true.”

Bucky smiles at that, then continues, “Paper is safer. One copy, easy to destroy.”

“Paper? Really, James?” Pepper stares at him. “You think that paper in a mailbox is safer than Jarvis? I know you and Tony have data stored on his servers.”

Bucky leans back in his seat. “Miss Potts, if you want my help, then this is the way we do it.”

She closes her eyes, runs her hands over her face, then nods. “All right.”

They agree that Bucky will send updates to a P.O. box and Pepper will destroy them. He gives her a crash course in enough spycraft that he figures she won’t accidentally out herself, but he’s still worried when she stands up to escort him out.

“James,” she says, looking up at him with a faint smile on her face, “I really appreciate it, and I promise I won’t take risks. Or,” her smile gets bigger, “not ones bigger than working for Tony in the first place. But, thank you.” She goes up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then gives him a little push out the door.

He looks at the closed door, says, “Kid, you are an idiot if you don’t marry that woman.” Then he turns to find out what damage New York has done to his truck.

***

Every week, he sends her a precis of what he’s found not long and not much, but he and Jarvis are seeing patterns that point directly at Stane. Bucky’s just managing to put it all together when Tony gets back, but Bucky can’t get through to warn him.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Jarvis says, and Bucky can detect a hint of distress in its voice. “Mr. Stark is still unavailable.”

Bucky growls, but says only, “Tell him that I called.”

“I will, sir.”

And then, he’s watching the news _again_ , and finds out Tony’s gone and built a flying suit of armor, and Stane’s dead anyway.

***

A few weeks later, Tony shows up at the door to Bucky’s house with a dozen donuts.

“I felt like being cliche,” Tony says, waving the orange box.

“You like the Boston cremes,” Bucky says, unimpressed, but holding the door open so Tony can come in. The kid’s got dark circles under his eyes and his goatee’s a little ragged. He’s been back in the US for a couple of months but he still looks too thin.

“And, yes,” Tony rolls his eyes. “I like the Boston cremes.”

Tony comes inside and drops the box of donuts on the table, but he seems too keyed up to sit and talk. Instead, Bucky ushers him out to the backyard and hands him a rake. Tony eyes it with annoyance, but he starts working on piling together the leaves that are all over the yard. Bucky grabs a couple of plastic bags, and they work in silence for a while, raking leaves into piles and then scooping them up into the bags.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky sees Tony open and close his mouth a couple times, like he’s trying to figure out what to say. Eventually, the kid comes out with, “So, I guess it isn’t paranoia if they really are out to get you, huh?”

Bucky looks over from where he’s dumping leaves and lawn clippings into a barrel. “Sometimes it’s still paranoia. But yeah, this time, it was the real deal.”

Tony leans on the rake and sighs. “How do you _do_ it? How do you _live_ like this?”

Bucky cocks his head, considering. “You figure out what’s worth it. And you hold tight to it.”

“Jesus,” Tony throws up his hands, dropping the rake altogether. “How do you go around being _normal_ after something like this?”

Bucky snorts. “I hate to break it to you, kid, but you were never normal.” He walks over to where Tony’s standing, puts his hand on Tony’s arm. Quietly, he says, “It’s trial and error. You get up, you try something and see how it feels. If that doesn’t work, you try something else.” He sighs a little, and looks up at the sky. “Some days one thing works, some days, it’s another thing.” He looks at Tony again, catches his eye and holds it. “Eventually, it mostly gets easier. It helps if you have people.”

Tony sighs. “I was really hoping you’d give me a more definitive answer.”

Bucky shrugs. “I wish I could, kid.”

***

When Tony makes noises about leaving, Bucky raises his eyebrows, orders him to sit down on the couch, and calls for pizza. Tony seems relieved, though he calls Pepper and pretends he’s outraged at being kept there. Bucky smiles as he hears Pepper say, “Oh, thank God.” and “No, Tony, I do not need to hear they’re scraping you off the interstate!” and eventually, “James, if you can hear this, _keep him for as long as you want_!”

Tony looks offended when he gets off the phone, but his look turns speculative when he sees Bucky laughing.

“Your girl has a point, you know,” Bucky says, coming in from the kitchen with a couple of beers. Then, he gives Tony a pointed look, eyes narrowed. “ _Is_ Pepper your girl now?”

“Eh,” Tony says, rocking his hand back and forth.

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky says, shaking his head, “and you should marry that girl.”

“Um,” Tony says, staring up at him from where he’s slumped on the couch. “That seems... weirdly intense, old man.”

Bucky places a beer down on the coffee table in front of Tony, takes a swig of his own. “That woman is amazing and, for some reason, she puts up with your shit. You could do a whole lot worse, kid.”

Tony rolls his eyes, then leans forward, hand closing around his bottle. “You could hear my whole conversation with Pepper, couldn’t you?”

Bucky walks back over toward the dining room table, where he left his wallet. “Yeah,” he admits.

“You know,” Tony says musingly. “There was that whole story about werewolves coming out last year?” He gives Bucky a look, then walks toward the dining room. “Turns out they have really good hearing and eyesight.”

Bucky sighs, leans against the table and grabs his stump with his right hand. “Just ask your question, Tony.”

“Okay,” Tony says, leaning forward and pointing, “Are you, or are you not, a werewolf?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“No,” Tony shakes his finger. “You don’t get to ignore it or act enigmatic. I think I deserve an answer.”

Bucky hears a car turning into the driveway and heads toward the door. “Yeah, Tony, I guess you do.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, August 18, 2011

Bucky’s just finishing up at the gym, piling things into a bag to take home. He hits the answer button without really paying attention. “Hey.”

“Phelan,” Isaac sounds unhappy and out of breath, “we found another one. Can you come up to my house?”

“Yeah, of course,” Bucky says, grabbing the bag. “I’m on my way. What’s the--”

“Thanks,” Isaac says, and he’s already gone.

‘Shit,’ Bucky thinks.

There’s a rogue running around Boston, a werewolf that’s gone crazy enough to bite six people that they know of. All of the victims are young, which means he’s stalking _kids_ , savaging them-- the attacks are brutal. So far, at least three of the victims haven’t survived the Change.

When Bucky pulls up the driveway, there are half a dozen cars parked there already, spilling onto the grass. The big house is dark against the setting sun, pack members gathered on the wrap-around porch. Bill is pairing them off, giving them neighborhoods to search. Bucky checks in, assuming he’ll be part of the hunt, and he’s eager for it. But Bill jerks a thumb toward the door and says, “Boss wants you downstairs, James.”

Downstairs is where the pack has a saferoom, built to hold new wolves, to make sure they aren’t a danger to themselves or others.

“All right,” Bucky says, curious. He’s already met two of the recently turned wolves, Nita and Jummah. They’re both just teenagers, and are clearly terrified by the idea of their new lives.

He heads through the house and down the center staircase, the wooden stairs creaking slightly under his feet. He can hear sobs and Isaac saying quietly, “It’s okay, kid, it’s fine. It’s going to be fine.” Isaac’s voice is pitched to soothe, but soothing is really not his strength. As Bucky drops down onto the basement carpet, he can hear the edge of impatience in Isaac’s voice. He hurries a little bit.

The saferoom has bright cheery walls and soft furniture that’s supposed to disguise the scent of silver and steel underneath. It’s designed to keep an out-of-control wolf locked in. Bucky hates it. He only goes in when he has to.

He does now, though, careful not to touch the walls, and stops just inside the doorway. “Hey, boss.”

In an attempt at nonchalance, Isaac is leaning against the wall a few feet from the door,. While he’s not a physically imposing person, he’s an Alpha werewolf, with all the charisma and presence that comes with his status. Right now, Isaac’s trying to be nonthreatening, but he’s clearly overwhelming the the girl. She’s half-hidden in the far corner of the room, huddled between the couch and the wall.

Isaac looks over at him. “Thank God.” He gestures to the girl, the movement quick enough that she flinches. “Can you please let her know that we’re not trying to hurt her?”

Bucky studies the girl-- she’s got dark skin and dark eyes, her hair is pulled back in a number of small braids, with little beads at the ends. She’s curled up as tight as she can get, shaking and smelling of terror-- it makes his wolf want to comfort her, want to kill the one that did this to her.

She’s watching him though, eyes tracking quickly between him and Isaac, clearly trying to figure out who is the bigger threat. Bucky slowly lowers himself to the floor, taking time to arrange himself comfortably. He sits tailor style, resting his right hand on his knee, and angles himself so his left arm is closer to her. The t-shirt he’s wearing today makes his stump extra-obvious, and he wants to make sure she sees it.

“What language is she speaking?” he asks quietly, once he’s settled in.

Isaac is watching him carefully. “Sounded kind of like French? I dunno, man, I studied Spanish.”

Bucky nods, then turns to the girl and looks up into her eyes. He makes his voice as calm and even as he can. “Hey there, kiddo. My name is James. _Je m’pelle James.”_

The girl just stares back, eyes wide and face distrustful, like she’s waiting for this to be a trick.

“What’s your name? _Comment vous appelez-vous?”_

She’s so quiet when she answers that he doubts he’d hear her if he were human. _“Je ma pelle Maelle."_

_“Maelle, savez-vous pourquoi vous êtes ici?”_

She nods slowly, still staring. Her voice is a whisper as she says, _"Le loup-garou.”_

_"Oui, Maelle.”_

“Are you like him?” she asks, switching to English. Her accent is soft, and the ‘r’ slurs into a ‘w’ sound.

Bucky holds out his hand, makes a seesaw motion. _“Oui et non._ I am a _loup-garou,_ a werewolf.” He takes a breath, letting her absorb that. “But me, my wolf,” he shakes his head, “we don’t hurt children.”

She looks down at her knees and whispers, “I don’t want to hurt children either.” When she looks up, her eyes are wet and he smells salt. “I have three little brothers and sisters. Please don’t let me hurt them.”

Bucky closes his eyes for a minute. He remembers being scared of hurting little children. When he opens them, he looks straight in her eyes. “I have little sisters, too. I would never want to hurt them.”   

She shakes a little, hand coming up to cover her mouth. “My friend and I,” he nods to Isaac, but keeps his eyes on Maelle, “we can help you to learn control-- to control your temper, your strength, so that you won’t hurt your little brothers and sisters.” She’s watching him so closely, her eyes hopeful. “We can help you learn not to hurt yourself or anyone else.”

Isaac makes a little growl, and Bucky glances over to see he’s curled his hands into fists. He’s pretty sure it’s because Isaac can’t handle seeing Maelle cry, but he’s well aware she’s not going to see if that way.

Maelle flinches a little back into her corner, her arms tightening around her knees. She drops back into French to ask her next question. _“And that one_ _?”_ She doesn’t point at Isaac, but it’s clear she’s asking about him.  _"_ _What will he do?"_

Bucky says gravely, “Isaac will find the one that hurt you and he will make sure that he never hurts anyone again.”

Maelle turns to look at Isaac, though she can only hold his gaze a few seconds before she has to drop her eyes. Then she turns back to Bucky and cocks her head. “And what will you do?”

Bucky smiles. “I will teach you to fight so that the next time someone tries to hurt you, you will rip his throat out before he can lay a hand on you.”

She stares at him, shocked, mouth open and eyes wide. And then she starts to smile, her teeth white against the darkness of her skin. “I think I would like that. I think I would like that very much.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, March 12, 2012

Tony’s been staying on the East Coast since January. It’s easier to manage the SHIELD consulting work from New York, and, with Stark Tower going up, he’d rather be close by. It’s a hell of a lot closer to Boston, too, which makes it easier when he finds something interesting in the SHIELD databases to blow off work and evade Happy’s attempts to bodyguard him.

The phone rings, and Jarvis says, “Ms. Potts, sir.”

“All right, Jarvis,” Tony says, and then, because the best defense is a good offense, “It’s on the schedule.”

“Really, Tony?” Pepper’s voice is shrill through the car’s speakers.

“Are you annoyed? Seriously? I did what you asked and put a meeting on the schedule.” He changes lanes and blows past the asshole in the Ferrari doing 65 in the far left lane. “Jesus, no one should drive a beautiful car like that, it’s an insult.”

“Tony, Tony!”

“What?” He checks his mirror and considers flipping the guy the bird. “Pepper, I’m driving, you know I shouldn’t talk when I’m driving.”

 _"Tony."_  Oh, that’s the dangerous voice. “You put your ‘meeting’--” Tony can just hear the air quotes around that word-- “on the schedule for the exact same time as this month’s board meeting.”

“Uh…” Tony tries to think of something to say. “Oops?” Not really, but, “Pepper, are you making the face? Don’t make the face.”

There’s a pause where he slows down enough not to get pulled over by some bored Statie and she breathes at him in that way that means she’s attempting to be calm.

“Are you on your way to Boston right now?” Pepper finally says, sounding angrily resigned. That’s an actual thing, apparently.

“Yeah, I’m already in Massachusetts,” he says, giving the finger to the guy trying to pass him and speeding up. “Surrounded by Massholes.”

“Tell James I say hello,” Pepper says.

She sounds so sad that he feels a sudden pang of guilt. God damn Bucky and his ‘operational security’ mentality. Pepper can keep a secret. He pictures her sitting at her desk, practicing apologies to board members.

“I’m sorry, Pep. I--” he stutters lamely. “It’s, um, it’s important.”

“Sure, Tony,” she says, voice turning bitter. “An urgent meeting with your friend.”

“Pep--”

“Have a good time, Tony.” The line goes dead.

‘Fuck,’ Tony thinks, and speeds up to keep the asshole in the porsche from passing him.

***

Tony pulls into the driveway, turns off the car, and all of a sudden he feels like he can breathe better. This feeling is objectively ridiculous, because of course he can breathe, he’s been breathing the whole time, but-- Anyway, breathing. He’s out of the car and halfway to the porch before he notices that Bucky’s leaning in the open doorway. He’s just standing there, looking like some kind of model, in his stupid worn jeans and his stupid worn t-shirt, with the hair and the eyes and that _mouth_. It’s unfair, Tony thinks. So unfair that, even after all these years, he’s still hit with a tiny curl of lust when he first sets eyes on him.

“Old man!” he says, flings his arms up to be theatrical. He’s not close enough to see, but he’s pretty sure that Bucky is rolling his eyes fondly.

“Kid,” Bucky says, “I got a call from your girl. She’s pretty angry at you right now, you better make sure she knows this wasn’t my idea.”

Tony walks up the porch steps and Bucky steps forward to hug him. “Really, Tony,” he says, stepping back to let Tony in, “This could have waited. It sounds like your meeting was important.”

“Yeah,” Tony admits, “it probably was.” Bucky waves him in and he takes a seat in the living room. “But I think this is pretty urgent.” He slumps in a chair, then glares up at Bucky. “And if I could tell Pepper _why_ I needed to see you, she’d be a whole lot more understanding about this, so really, it’s _your_ fault she’s mad.”

“The fewer people that know about this the better, you know that.” Bucky’s stopped in the entry to the living room, watching him from where he’s leaning against the wall. “When’s the last time you slept, kid?”

“I’ve been sifting through terabytes of data for you, asshole.” Tony waves his hand, shrugging. “Besides, sleep is for the weak.”

And _there_ is Bucky’s unimpressed look. Tony likes to make bets on how many times he can inspire that look in a single visit. “Kid, if you haven’t slept in the last 24 hours, I’m confiscating the car keys and you’re sleeping here tonight.”

“Whatever, _old man,”_ Tony stretches out his legs, swinging them up onto the hassock. “I slept in the last 24 hours.”

Tony knows that somehow Bucky can sense the truth. He’s not sure how. Maybe it’s part of the whole werewolf thing? It means all Tony has to do is be just truthful _enough_. And what he’s just said _is_ the truth-- although he’s managed maybe 45 minutes? Slumped over at his desk?

Bucky levels a supremely good unimpressed look at him-- two in the first five minutes, Tony congratulates himself on a new record. “How many hours in the last 24?” Fuck. Bucky doesn’t even wait for an answer to that. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’re staying here tonight.”

Tony tries to be mad at him, but Bucky goes and makes coffee, which makes up for a lot. Then Tony’s annoyed again, because Bucky insists on handing him the mug. This results in Tony raising his eyebrows, because he doesn’t like to be handed things, and Bucky rolling his eyes back because he refuses to take that seriously. But, what? It’s a _peeve._ Tony is allowed to have peeves.

Bucky ignores all of this and settles on the couch across from him. “So? They’ve been inviting you to their New York offices, right? What happened?”

Tony blows on the surface of his coffee, then puts the mug down on the coffee table. He digs into his jeans, fishes out the flash drive he stuffed in his back pocket, and throws it at Bucky. “See for yourself.”

Bucky snatches the drive out of the air, then stares at it a minute, like he was expecting it to be… Tony’s not sure what. Not a flash drive. “Uh, sorry?” he says, wincing. He knows better than to throw things at traumatized veterans. Knows it from the inside out, now, thank you very much, Obie, you complete and total asshole--

He’s caught off guard when he looks up into too-perceptive eyes and Bucky says, “It’s fine, kid.”

Bucky heads over to his desk, saying, “What kind of precautions did you take? I don’t need you ending up in some secret government prison because you left your bugs littered around SHIELD.”

“Hey!” Tony glares. “They’re not bugs! They are highly secure miniature computer scanning devices, and I’m getting a lot of practice in developing unobtrusive designs.” He shakes his head, “And funny you should mention secret prisons.”

Bucky turns to look at him, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

Tony nods to the flash drive. “See for yourself.” And then, as Bucky opens his custom Stark laptop and starts to fumble with the flash drive, Tony shouts. ”Stop!”

Bucky freezes.

“I should probably, uh,” Tony starts to sit up, feet thumping to the floor. “Update the security on your machine, first.”

“Oh,” Bucky looks from the laptop and back to him, says, “How about you give me a synopsis while you drink your coffee and I start the stew I’m now making for dinner. I think you need to be a little more awake than you are right now when you start working on my computer.”

“I’m _fine_ , old man!” Tony says, oops, maybe a little too heartily, but he follows Bucky into the kitchen anyway. “Short story: nothing that screamed Lame Nazi Death Plan to me.” He leans against the counter. “But there are things that point to an off-the-books site. Funds that go missing, a little here and there. References to buildings that don’t match SHIELD’s on-the books holdings.” He sketches a tower in the air with his hands. “Plus, every time I go in, it seems like the files are organized just a little bit differently. It’s subtle, but I’ve been taking screenshots the last few times, and it’s just… I can’t put my finger on it.”

Bucky’s rooting around in the refrigerator, pulling out food-type items, and Tony has a bad feeling he’s going to be asked to do something kitchen-y. Chop something. Or, um, stir. Bucky emerges with an armful of vegetables which he plops on the counter.

“Can you show me the screenshots?”

“Uh, yeah.” Tony pulls out his little Starkphone prototype with a mini-Jarvis-- definitely not going to be standard. “Jarvis, can you give us a virtual display of LSN 221-227? Arrange them side-by-side.”

Bucky’s leaning against the counter as the display comes up, the hologram’s blue glow shining against the light-colored cabinets. Tony watches as he comes closer and stares at the files. After a moment, Bucky’s finger comes up to trace between a few. “Here and here and here.”

Tony leans close to see what he’s pointing to. “Yeah, those were the first ones I caught too. There are more.”

“Huh.” Bucky keeps studying the file listing. “What’s in these files?”

“A few are financials-- that’s where I noticed something bigger seemed to be happening.” Tony grabs a carrot, rubs it on his jeans and takes a bite. “Some of the others, that’s where I saw references to rooms that don’t seem to be in the main SHIELD building or on their helicarrier.”

“Their what?” Bucky turns to look at him, makes a face when Tony crunches down on the carrot.

Tony swallows before he says, “Helicarrier. It’s like an aircraft carrier that flies.” Bucky shakes his head, and Tony shrugs. “Not important. What is important is possible black-ops sites.” He yawns loudly enough his jaw cracks and when he closes his mouth, Bucky’s looking sympathetic.

“It can wait.” Bucky gestures at the pile of vegetables. “You think you can chop onions without slicing your thumb open?”

Tony shakes his head. “I think it’s better if I just act as your tech guy.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Bucky laughs as he says it, turning to grab a knife out of the block. “My own, personal Geek Squad.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, March 19, 2012

Bucky’s at the desk in his living room, going through Tony’s most recent set of SHIELD data files. He’s been at it since he got home from the gym at 4, which means that now he’s mostly just clicking around idly. He yawns and feels his eyes drooping.

He hasn’t slept well for days. It’s one of those weeks where his brain just goes nuts. Every night features elaborate, technicolor nightmares, sometimes even two or three in a row. He wakes up screaming more often than not. Yesterday, he woke up already shifting. He ended up spending half the day in wolf form.

He rubs at his eyes, then reaches back down for the mouse, ready to close out and try to sleep when something stops him. He squints at the screen, tries make the letters line up and _there_ \-- There are just twenty words or so, in different languages, scattered across the page but they light up his brain. He knows this pattern. He _knows_ it.

“Son of a bitch.” Bucky blinks at the screen, then pages back to the start of the file.

In the end, in 44 pages of text he finds maybe a half a page of useful information. As far as he can tell, it’s a single report about experimental subjects. Four of them died, but another two survived and training has begun.

_He hears a hoarse voice speaking to him calmly, in Russian, "_ _Up. It is time for training."_

_Three men with knives are lined up against him. He smells the heavy leather of their protective clothing, the dank concrete of underground. He shivers as he rises, naked, hair matted. His left side is on fire, the acid feel of silver against his skin. His arm makes a snicking sound of metal on metal._

_Bucky shivers, feels pain piercing his hand and--_ He comes back to himself, clutching the desk so hard the wood is cracking. Bile rises up in his throat and he drops his head between his legs until the urge to vomit passes. He fumbles on the desk for his phone, makes the call.

“Charles,” he says into the receiver. “I think I found something.”

***

Given the method of encryption, at first Bucky’s the only one who can decipher the text. The hidden meanings often trigger memories, and more nightmares. He sleepwalks through the next three weeks, forcing himself to keep a normal routine at the gym, but he's on edge, twitchy, more paranoid than he's been in years. Eventually, Tony writes a program that can do some decoding for them. Bucky still has to check the work, though-- the program’s only about 40% effective-- so he loses more sleep, both to checking and to nightmares.

After Bucky gets over the initial excitement, he’s a little dismayed. They have nearly twenty years worth of files, pulled at random from SHIELD’s servers based on whatever Tony was thinking at the time. Most of what they have is useless.

“Start with the newest files,” Charles advises over Skype. He looks out at Bucky through a pixelated screen-- the wifi isn’t working great today. “That’s where you found the encryption first, and it’s most likely to tell us what they’re up to now.”

“Okay,” Bucky sighs and rubs his palm over his face. He slumps back into his desk chair. “I will. You going through the financials again?”

“I will,” Charles looks down at something in front of him,  then back up. “I have to go out of town for the next week or so, but I’ll do what I can in the evenings.”

From behind Charles, Bucky can hear Anna, Charles’ wife, shout, “Not too late in the evenings.”

“Yes, dear.” Charles makes a face at Bucky when he says it, his voice is so meek and obliging, that Bucky cackles.

***

They talk again a couple of weeks later. “There’s a site in Maine,” Bucky tells Charles. He stretches, spine popping as he turns left and then right in the chair. “It would take maybe half a day for me to get there. From what I can see on Google Maps, it’s not far out of a Portland.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “Tony was able to get me some recent satellite imagery and it looks deserted.” He looks at Charles’ face on his screen. “I think it makes sense for me to go up and look around.”

“No.” Charles looks up at him from the Skype window, frowning. “You are not going by yourself.”

Bucky watches him back, wary. “Was that an order?”

Charles’s smile is thin, and he shakes his head. “I’m well aware I’m not your Alpha, James. But this is not a good idea.” He leans back, and Bucky can see the wooden paneling of the office behind him. “Even with the satellite photos, it may still be staffed. Even if it’s not, SHIELD or Hydra could still have recording equipment there, or cameras.” Charles’ eyes glow gold for a minute. “There’s still too much unknown.”

Bucky stands, turns, and starts pacing his living room, well aware he’s moving in and out of the Skype window.

“James.” Bucky hears the squeak of a chair. “Why this sudden need to act?”

Bucky rakes his fingers through his hair and tries to think. His wolf is angry too, and it’s hard to fight through that to a rational argument.

“When I read these files,” he begins quietly, standing behind the desk chair and looking down at the screen, “I read that they are training their test subjects and-- I remember. I see pieces of my time with Hydra.” He takes a breath, forces himself to let it out. He knows that the wolf is looking out of his eyes. “I remember how they trained me. How they _used_ me.” He drops his eyes, body jittering, hand flexing on the back of the chair. “I want to find them, Charles, I want to kill them.”

“They are training their test subjects.” Charles leans forward, face filling the screen. “Training them in what?”

In the corner, there’s a flash, like electricity arcing, but when he turns, it’s nothing. He turns back to the screen and Charles’ face has that blank look that masks his emotions. Bucky wishes someone would invent a way to digitize smells.

“Assassination, most likely. Infiltration. Destruction.”

Charles’ face is still filling the screen. “Did they always make you kill, James?”

Bucky turns away from the desk, resumes pacing through the living room. “No. Sometimes the mission was capture. But. Usually.” He hears a small noise in the background of their call-- likely Anna heard more than she expected.

“James,” Charles says, and his voice is strong. “I promise we will stop them.” Bucky shakes his head-- he’s not sure that Charles can keep that promise. “But you are known to them, and you stand out because of your arm. I know you don’t like wearing a prosthetic, but there are consequences to every choice.”

Bucky closes his eyes. “All I do is hide, Charles.” His voice is shaking, furious and, if he’s honest, terrified.

“We will find a way to investigate these sites.” Charles’ voice is soothing. “But you are going to have to wait.”

“God damn it!” Bucky spins around and hits the end button for the call. He sinks to the floor, wrapping his arm around his knees. He’s shaking, memories rising, anger warring with fear. “God _damn_ it.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, April 7, 2012

“The first rule of werewolf club is we don’t talk about werewolf club,” Andrew chants. “The second--”

Nita giggles, while Jummah groans and calls out, “You are not Tyler Durden, Andrew.”

“Andrew!” Bucky is not in the mood for the kid’s bullshit today, and his voice is harsh. “Get in the ring with Maelle.” He does manage a softer voice when he says, “Nita and Jummah, why don't you practice throws?”

Jummah’s “Yes sir,” is quiet and Nita is more subdued than usual. Bucky digs a knuckle into his right eye--his head is throbbing-- and then, grasping for a lighter tone, says, “Okay, you two, engage.”

In less than a minute, Andrew is on his ass, looking shocked. Maelle even looks a little surprised, and Bucky just rubs his forehead. “Up, Andrew. Again.”

Predictably, it takes Andrew a few moves to figure out what’s going on and Maelle has him on the ground in five. Andrew taps out and Bucky has them up again. And again. It’s not until the fourth round that Andrew’s head is remotely in the game. It’s pretty clear he hasn’t practiced at all since last week, and Bucky is furious.

Because hypervigilance has been his constant companion for more than a week, along with the headache and the nightmares, he hears the rumble of Alison’s car pulling into the lot and her footsteps to the door of the gym. She’s not supposed to be here this evening, he thinks as he turns to face the door.

“Dr. Marquette,” Jummah’s voice jumps in surprise, “We didn't know you were coming!” His voice goes up a little higher than he probably means it to and Bucky can smell his awkward arousal-- Jummah’s unfortunate crush hasn't dissipated yet.

Bucky shakes his head, this is a distraction he doesn't need right now. His voice is abrupt. “Jummah, why don't you go work the bag?” It’s across the room, and that should give the kid a chance to pull himself together.

“Wow, he's in a good mood,” Alison stage-whispers to Nita.

Bucky growls, which has the unfortunate effect of distracting Andrew so he isn't braced for Maelle’s kick to his chest. He manages to roll up, though. “Good, Andrew. Maelle, stop dropping your left.

Behind him, Nita says quietly, “Is Prof ok, Dr. M-- Alison?”

He can hear the smile in Alison’s voice. “It's his time of the month, kiddo. Were you working on throwing off an opponent? Okay, let’s keep going.”

Bucky forces himself to ignore them and focus on Andrew and Maelle. Andrew is now screwing up the combination Bucky’s been teaching him for three weeks and God damn it--

“Stop!” Bucky quickly steps between them. “Maelle, good work,” he tries to soften his voice, but he’s _angry_. “You go down and work with Nita and Alison.”

“Yes, Prof,” she says quietly, climbing quickly out of the ring. He wants to catch her and give her a smile-- she's the most diligent of them all, and despite his bad mood he's proud of her-- but she moves too fast.

He turns back to Andrew. “Kid, we’ve been through this combination the last three weeks.”

“Uh, yeah.” Andrew pushes his sweaty hair out of his face. “Yeah, I know, just--”

Bucky watches him fidget, hands twisting in his t-shirt. “Did you practice?”

“Um…”

“Seriously, kid?” Bucky’s grasping for amusement, because this is nothing new, Andrew’s favorite kind of violence is video games and he’s never going to work as hard as Maelle.

“I know, I know, I’m terrible.” Andrew looks up, tries to meet his eyes, then quickly looks down again. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m a skinny Chinese nerd, dude.” He shrugs, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m not sure why you’re putting us both through this. Like, why don’t we just give up. I’ll go back to playing Halo and we can just pretend this whole thing never happened.”

Bucky growls, and it makes Andrew startle. Makes everyone else in the room freeze for a minute, and then he hears Alison say quietly, “James.”

He ignores her and stares at Andrew. “Do you know the average lifespan of a werewolf after they’re Changed?”

Andrew looks up, squinting, mouth drawn into a frown. “What does that matter, dude?”

“It’s eight years.” He hears a gasp, but he’s concentrating hard enough on Andrew he doesn’t know who made it. “That’s an average, though, and there are a fair number of old wolves. Alison and I have been around for decades.”  He steps a little closer to Andrew, who’s watching him warily now. “You’re in college, Andrew, what does that mean.”

“That, um,” Andrew swipes his hand across his forehead, “That a lot of wolves don’t live that long?”

“A lot die in their first year or shortly after.” He takes another step toward Andrew, who swallows and steps back. “They don’t know how to control their wolf and they don’t know how to fight, _so they die_.”

“Uh,” Andrew’s watching him the way prey watches a predator, and it just makes Bucky angrier.

“I’m teaching you this, I’m ‘putting you through this’ for your _protection_. Because the pack is as strong as its weakest member.” Andrew’s face closes off and he hunches in on himself. “Now, square up.”

Bucky steps back a few paces and watches Andrew take a couple of breaths before he takes his stance.

“Come at me,” Bucky says.

It’s not the most uncoordinated attack he’s seen, since he actually remembers Steve fighting the Murphy brothers circa 1927. Andrew rushes, Bucky sidesteps, and Andrew doesn’t quite manage to stop himself from hitting the ropes. He does manage to use his momentum to swing around and try a kick that’s a bit more athletic than he’s used to. His legs go wild and he ends up in a heap. But, give him credit, he rolls over, gets himself up, and squares off pretty well. And now, he also seems kind of pissed.

Which, well, so’s Bucky. “Again.”

This time, Andrew’s focused enough that he engages, tries to strike. Usually, Bucky would just step out of the way-- generally he doesn’t let a trainee land a punch, or take one, until he’s confident they can deal with the consequences. But Andrew needs to understand what he’s messing with.

Bucky easily dodges Andrew’s punches, and then steps under his guard and catches him in the solar plexus, flipping him over his shoulder. Bucky uses all his speed, much of his strength, and Andrew lands hard enough that the wind’s knocked out of him and he’ll probably be black and blue tomorrow.

“Andrew!” Nita shouts, and Bucky turns to see Alison restraining her. “Are you ok?”

Bucky looks back down at Andrew, who’s struggling for breath. In his head he hears that fucking voice biting out the words, _'Up. Engage again.'_ He closes his eyes a minute, then crouches down beside Andrew. The kid flinches.

“That was,” Bucky’s voice wavers and he fights to make himself sound stern, “the bare minimum of what you need to be able to fight back against.” He grabs Andrew’s hand and pulls him up to sit. “You will practice,” Bucky makes it a command. “Every day.” He waits until Andrew nods, then he stands up. He needs to get out of here.

“Class is over, everyone,” he says, as he heads up to his office.

***

The gym’s upstairs office has long windows on all sides, so Bucky has a nearly 360-degree view of the gym from his desk. He takes his time pulling his things together, trying to calm down, and he waits until all the kids leave to go back downstairs. Alison’s still there, like he expected, and he can smell her anger as he starts down the stairs.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you, James?” Alison’s got her hands on her hips, standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Not now, Alison,” he says, trying to brush past her.

She grabs his stump, swinging him around to face her. He expected it, braced for it, and he still ends up tossing her half across the room.

“Alison!” He jogs over to where she landed, but she’s already rolled to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Alison glares at him, pushing her hair out of her face. “You ask me that but not Andrew?”

“He was fine,” Bucky says, slashing the air with his hand. “I just knocked the wind out of him.”

“He was terrified. _All_ of those kids were, by the time you were done proving a stupid fucking point.” Her voice is shaking and her eyes start shining blue, wolf close to the surface.

Bucky feels sick to his stomach, but he makes himself shrug. “Then maybe they’ll fucking practice. Maybe this will be an object fucking lesson on what it means to be a werewolf.”

Alison takes a deep breath, visibly trying to calm down. “James, what the hell is wrong with you. I’ve never seen you lose your temper like this, with _kids_.”

He runs his hand over his face, and when he looks up again, Alison’s closer than he expects, arm reaching toward him. “James, you’re a good teacher. I know Andrew’s frustrating you, but seriously, what the hell.”

He steps back, and she drops her arm. “He’s lucky I only knocked the wind out of him.” He smells dank concrete, hears the whine of batons in the air, the voice ordering him, _‘Again.'_  “These kids have no fucking idea how bad it can get.”

“What?” Alison’s mouth drops open. “What the hell are you saying?

Bucky takes a deep breath, makes himself think through the fog of exhaustion. “I’m saying, how the hell are these kids supposed to protect themselves, protect the pack, if they can’t manage these simple moves?”

Alison studies him for a long moment, looking him up and down. Bucky’s conscious of the bags under his eyes, the fact that he’s lost too much weight. “That’s not what you were saying, James.” She cocks her head. “You look like shit and you scared a bunch of teenagers tonight. So let’s try this again. What’s wrong, James? What do you need?”

His eyes prickle with the start of tears and he pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to stop them. “A lot of things, Ali.” He takes a deep breath, knows Alison can hear the edge of a sob in it. “A lot of things and I can’t really do anything about them right now.”

Quietly, she says, “I’m going to come over there and hug you.”

He nods, watches her move slowly toward him, forces himself not to back away. But he can’t help flinching when she wraps her arms around him. “You fucked up tonight,” she whispers, and he nods gingerly.

“I know,” he murmurs against her hair.

“You’re going to sleep at my house tonight.” He freezes, and she says, “You don’t have to sleep with Lisette and me, but I’m not letting you go home alone.”

“I don’t want to hurt her,” he mutters. Lisette is human and all too breakable. “I’m--” he sighs, confesses, “I’m having nightmares.”

“I won’t let you hurt her, James. I promise.” Alison pulls back a little, but she keeps her arms around him. “And in the morning, we’re going to talk about how to fix this.”

Bucky wonders how the hell you fix something like this. He looks down in her eyes and sighs. “All right, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Boston, MA, May 4, 2012

“Jesus fuck,” a voice comes up from on the gym floor, followed by someone whistling. Bucky, in the upstairs office, looks up from the accounts. Looking out at the gym’s late morning crowd, he can see that nearly everyone has  stopped their workout. Instead, most of them are staring up at the wall, peering at the one TV he allows in the place. It’s usually just tuned to the news or to replays of old fights. From up in the office, even wolf eyes can’t get a fix on what’s happening down below, on that little tiny screen. He puts the account books back in the safe, turns the dial, and heads downstairs.

No one’s rushing out of the place, though he hears at least a few phones going off in people’s pockets and at least two of the folks he can see are EMTs. Instead, everyone’s staring at the TV. There’s an awed stillness, in a way that reminds him of 9-11. The smells are mixed, but there’s a tang of anger and fear overlaying the smell of salt and fresh sweat. Fuck.

When he gets closer to the TV, he can see what has everyone riveted. Someone, no, some _things_ are attacking a city. The camera angles keep changing and it takes him a minute for him to recognize part of the Manhattan skyline. At the same moment, the ticker at the bottom of the screen flashes “Apparent Alien Attack in New York City.”

Lucius slides up to his right side. “You seeing this, Prof?” His voice is hoarse.

“I’m seeing it.” Bucky nods, unable to look away from the screen. “Still working on believing.”

One of the others, Aliyah, says, “Are we sure it’s aliens?”

Another voice answers, “I don’t think Fae or werewolves look like that.”

“No,” Bucky hears himself say distantly, “No they do not.” He can feel his eyes starting to glow, wolf awake and raging at the back of his brain, but he can’t look away from the screen.

A few heads turn and look his way. He thinks, distantly, that he’s going to regret this comment. He isn’t out, not yet, and the plan had been not ever. Or, not ‘til the threat of Hydra is gone, permanently. Onscreen, though, he can see the zip of red-gold that means Tony’s on the scene, and something else, a different kind of green from the apparent aliens, brighter maybe, leaping around and catching the creatures flying through the air, tossing them into buildings.

They all stand there watching for 15, maybe 20 minutes, when the screen cuts to a wide-shot of blond man in a blue suit. The announcer is saying something about the people who are fighting. There’s been a redhead firing handguns, and a couple times Bucky thinks he sees an arrow hitting targets, though that’s probably fucking nuts.

From this distance, the man in blue looks a little like Steve, and Bucky wonders who came up with the idea of a Captain America look-alike. Knowing it can’t be Steve doesn’t stop Bucky’s breath catching when the aliens swoop down and come at the guy. He peers at the TV, watching as the man swings a shield at the attackers. Bucky can feel his heart racing. Whoever this is, whatever facsimile of the shield they’ve got, the guy has better control than Steve did when he first started using it. Back then, it just flopped around everywhere. It took weeks for Steve to actually hit a target. Then the guy in blue finishes off a third alien and looks up directly towards the camera.

Bucky freezes. His wolf does too. Then, after a moment, it whines and Bucky whispers, “Yeah.”

That man, looking at the camera, is Steve. Is undeniably, indisputably Steve. Which means, somehow, that Steve is alive.

Bucky feels the wolf screaming, an endless howl, and struggling to get free. He takes a deep breath. He makes himself take control, push aside the wolf’s emotions. In his head, he runs through everything they’ll need to do to get out of Boston and into New York in enough time to save Steve. He turns to Lucius.  “Come on up to the office a minute, kid. I’m going to need your help”

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to [k8/paintedmaypole](http://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedmaypole/pseuds/k8) for Gabe's business card! She spent hours down the research rabbit hole looking at Howard University yearbooks from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s in order to get make it as period-appropriate as possible. You're the best, babe!


End file.
